Hindsight
by laras-dice
Summary: "There's no CIA, anymore, Vaughn. There's no protocol...There's not even a Sydney Bristow anymore." Vaughn faces a decision. (11/11)
1. Author Notes and Miscellany

AN on AN (heh): Usually, I like to keep all of my author notes in one chapter at the end of the fic, so they don't gum up the actual writing in the chapter. But keeping them at the end of the fic seems to be a problem on ff.net, because when I post new chapters, everyone is seeing the author notes instead of the new chapter. So, I've moved author notes to the beginning here. Sorry if there's any confusion! 

Author Notes and Miscellany

General note: The Witness Protection Program, according to Lara's half-assed research, does not officially exist and may actually be a creation of Hollywood. So any actual Witness Protection details are probably from Lara's head and should not be taken as real or researched.

Chapter 1 — Contingencies

Rating: R (language)

Music: Tonic, "Knock Down Walls"

Notes: None

Chapter 2 — The Place and Time

Rating: R (language, sexual situations, naked Syd)

Music: Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way;" Soul Asylum, "Without A Trace;" Don Henley, "End of the Innocence"

Notes: Lara has never been to the airport in Phoenix. She did, however, calculate the driving time, using either or . Her memory's not that good, and that chapter was a long time ago.

Chapter 3 — Gatsby

Rating: R (language, sexual situations)

Music: Hal Ketchum, "Past the Point of Rescue;" Crosby, Stills and Nash, "Love the One You're With;" Robert Plant, "29 Palms;" Peal Jam, "Black;" Collapsis, "October;" Beatles, "Yesterday;" Elton John, "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues;" Stevie Nicks, "Ever Did Believe;" Better Than Ezra, "This Time of Year."

Notes: _The Great Gatsby_, of course, refers to the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, copyright 1925. Fitzgerald is referenced in episode 1x14, "The Coup," although not to Vaughn. That would be Lara taking creative liberty. Heh.

Chapter 4 — Could Have

Rating: R (language)

Music: Blind Faith, "Can't Find My Way Home;" Ani DiFranco, "Out of Range"

Notes: Bloomington and Normal are real cities, although Lara has not been to either (she does, however, live in the Midwest). Information from: , , and . Lara usually gets her names from the U.S. Census sites: , , .

Chapter 5 — Prospects

Rating: R (oh, I'm sure there's language in there)

Music: Depeche Mode, "Policy of Truth"

Notes: Illinois State University Athletics (ESPN.com): 

Chapter 6 — The Curse of Sydney

Rating: R (language)

Music: Ani DiFranco, "Deep Dish" and "So What"

Notes: None

Chapter 7 — Resolution

Rating: R (language, sexual situations, blah blah blah)

Music: Fleetwood Mac, "The Chain" and "Landslide;" Gin Blossoms, "Hey Jealousy;" Rolling Stones, "Angie" and "Ruby Tuesday"

Notes: Thorne gets extra special beta credit on this one for putting up with Psycho Lara And The Evil Paragraph.

Chapter 8 — Now or Then

Rating: NC-17 (for sex, and hell, there's probably language in there, too...but mostly the sex)

Music: Heather Nova, "Walk this World;" Ani DiFranco, "Pulse," "Both Hands," "Shy;" Counting Crows, "Anna Begins;" Neil Young, "Heart of Gold;" Jeff Buckley, "Everybody Here Wants You;" Poe, "Amazed;" Tori Amos, "Losing My Religion;" Al Green, "Here I Am"

Notes: While Lara usually gets her names from the sites mentioned in the Chapter 4 AN, Catherine comes from Thorne.

Chapter 9 — Silence

Rating: R (same old, same old)

Music: Van Morrison, "Moondance" and "Tupolo Honey;" Bruce Springsteen, "Cover Me"

Notes: None

Chapter 10 — In Between

Rating: R (language, sexual situations)

Music: Tom Petty, "Learning To Fly;" Counting Crows, "A Long December;" Al Green, "Love and Happiness;" Peter Gabriel, "Your Eyes"

Notes: None

Chapter 11 — Normal

Rating: R (language)

Music: Better Than Ezra, "Good;" Ani DiFranco, "Make Me Stay;" Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"

Notes: Sadly, Lara did actually look up the Illinois State University Web site, and dig herself up a campus map: . She usually gets her handgun info from here: .


	2. Contingencies

Title: Hindsight  
**Author:** Laras_Dice  
**E-mail:** laras_dice@yahoo.com  
**Website URL:** http://www.geocities.com/laras_dice  
**Feedback: **Absolutely. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome.  
**Distribution: **CM, Omega-17, always, otherwise please let me know.  
**Disclaimer: **I understand that Alias is owned by ABC and was created by JJ Abrams and Bad Robot, not Lara. I do not profit from this work beyond personal enjoyment. I do it because I love Alias, and what I do here is meant to help, rather than hinder, the show's market.  
**Summary: **"There's no CIA, anymore, Vaughn. There's no protocol...There's not even a Sydney Bristow anymore." Vaughn faces a decision.  
**Rating: **R to NC-17. NC-17 chapters will be labeled prominently.  
**Spoilers:** None  
**Classification: **Drama/Angst/Romance  
**Author's Notes:** Futurefic. I started writing it before the second season, but it's still pretty much canon. Many many thanks to Robin and Thorne for betaing. Thanks, too, to Aire, Celli, Diana, Jenai, Karen, Marifel and everyone else in blog/AIM land for all your support. 

  
_"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."_

—The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

  
  


Chapter 1 — Contingencies

There are three ways that it ends.

There is her, in an alley, in a parking garage, in her bathtub. Single gunshot wound to the forehead. Autopsies and photographs and a case file stamped closed after they lower her casket into the ground.

There is the end of SD-6, a smile he's never seen from her. Freedom and possibilities, and he'll push past the nerves and the new tension between them. Remind her that he owes her dinner, and they'll go to the little restaurant three blocks from his place. _The eggplant parmesan here is amazing, Sydney._ They'll work through a bottle of red zinfandel and revel in the fact that the future is finally wide open. _You're amazing, Sydney._

There is the meticulous planning, extraction contingencies. Maps that record the distances. Nearest safehouse to Credit Dauphine. Her school. Her house. An urgency, created by the threat of the first way, the men with guns searching for her. The casket, after she leaves, without the gunshot wounds, the pictures and the death. Plans, laid into place when she was activated, ready to be set into motion with a phone call.

He gets that phone call today.

"Bristow's been made," and he does not need clarification as to which one. _ His_ Bristow. Sydney. Certainly the possibility exists for Jack, and there are plans for him as well. But he only worries about Sydney, harsh and real and now, years of fears pummeling his mind as his stomach lurches and tension takes his body.

"Do we have a location on her?" Short and blunt, his response determined by protocol, procedure. Mapped out years ago with the hope that it would not end this way. The knowledge that it probably would, that this was preferable to her dead, that the little restaurant was never really going to happen. _Someday, there would be the phone call. Someday there is this and fuck fuck fuck she needs you to focus._ He does, and realizes he knows the answer to his own question.

Airport. LAX. Mission over. Coming home. Coming home to an ambush. Sydney in her business suit, wheeling her little black suitcase behind her along the curb, ready to step into the cab and never seeing the red dot on the back of her head, not realizing until too late that the shot had been fired —

"Wait, LAX. She's on her way back from Singapore. We've got the flight number somewhere."

"I'm on it," his caller says, and hangs up. 

He knows what to do, now. Go to her, find her, guide her, until she is somewhere they can't lay a red dot on her. Her flight arrives at 1:30 — he's got 20 minutes and it's a half-hour drive. _Close enough._

Car keys and wallet, snatched quickly off his kitchen counter, and he forgets to lock the door on the way out.

———

He is all business by the time he arrives, 20 minutes of deep breaths through the car ride here. Thirty miles over the speed limit, but it is Saturday, and no one seemed to notice. Discreet with his credentials, through several security checkpoints, into the concourse, and somehow he is early. Or her flight is late.

Ten minutes late, according to the display above her gate. He leans against the wall in front of the gate, close enough that he will see her clearly when the passengers exit. Ten careful minutes of watching anywhere but the doors to the long hallway that leads into the airplane. He listens, instead, until the first set of suitcase wheels clunks over the small strip of metal between the hallway and the waiting area. Then he picks up his cell phone, number one on speed dial. SD-6 always pays for first class, and she will be among the first off of the plane.

A young executive and an elderly couple first, neither in a big hurry, and they frustrate him. But there, now, Sydney. Alive. Laughing at something Dixon has said, head tilted back slightly, happy smile on her face. He catches this image of her, pulls it in — wants to have it, hold it, because regardless of what happens next, she will be gone from his life soon. 

"I have a 20 on Mountaineer," he murmurs into his hastily applied microphone.

She responds, finally, to the ringing of her cell phone. Digs through her purse, pulls it out, thumb down on the send button. "Hello?"

"We're pulling you," he says. "SD-6 has a hit out on you. Find a way to get away from Dixon — we have to get you out of here."

It is on her face, mostly in her eyes, but only briefly. He sees it — sees her stomach drop like his did and her pulse jump and the sudden realization that this is the end of life as she knows it. Dixon does not, and then it is gone. She turns toward him, and Vaughn can hear some of the conversation, despite the bustling concourse. Something about Will and duty-free tequila. She'll grab a taxi later.

Dixon nods, walks away. She waits until he disappears around a distant corner, and then turns to Vaughn. Full panic on her face now.

"Do what you said you were going to do. I'm right behind you." He tries to keep his voice reassuring, but fears his face looks just as alarmed.

She turns now, begins walking, but he forces himself to wait. _Hold. Hold. Hold. And now._ He starts after her, 25 feet of people and suitcases and strollers between them. _Don't lose her. Can't lose her. Can't fail her now._

"Vaughn, what the hell is going on?"

A large man cuts in front of him before he can answer, carry-on flapping behind him, blocking Vaughn's view of her for a few seconds. _Lost her. Lost her oh god lost her._ But the man passes, and she is still there, a few feet from a corner.

"Syd, I don't know. I just got the call."

She turns the corner. He walks briskly, relaying the gate numbers he passes through his comm link. On the other end, agents in a surveillance van are checking them against maps of the airport. Trying to come up with a plan on the fly.

He reaches the corner — _finally_ — and turns into a large hallway, sided by more gates. There, at the end, the duty-free shop, and he can't see her, but she must be inside.

Five minutes, says the voice in his ear, the plan detailed specifically.

"Syd?"

"I'm in the shop." Voice soft and a little shaky over the phone.

"We need five minutes." How many brands of tequila are in there_,_ he wonders._ How long can she stall? How long can she look at liquor and cigars and fine chocolates without wanting to sprint out of the place and run for her life?_

"Okay."

He looks around for a way to pass the next five minutes inconspicuously. There, on the wall, a bank of monitors — arrivals and departures. He walks over and pretends to study it.

———

She emerges five minutes and 23 seconds later, her purchase in a plastic blue bag, brown paper somewhere beneath that. Her hand makes a tight fist, clutched around the neck of the bottle. 

He presses the phone closer to his ear. "There's a women's restroom to your right, Syd. Do you see it?"

"Yes."

"Right side, third stall from the end. There's a change of clothes in there." And somewhere inside, the female agent that placed the clothing, there to back her up. But he does not tell her this. "Leave everything but your cell, and come back out when you're ready."

She disappears into the restroom and he waits, again.

———

Four minutes, three seconds this time. She is dressed now as part of the custodial staff, baggy blue coverall uniform and her hair tucked under a baseball cap. Will's tequila is gone.

"Syd?"

"I hear you."

"Turn left. Twenty feet down there's a door, marked 'Staff Only.' Go inside and wait for me."

She works her way through the crowd and then the door, and he relaxes slightly as she slips inside. _You're still not home safe. _He starts to follow her, head pointed toward the door, eyes sweeping the place. They halt on a familiar face. Dixon is back, flanked by two men in dark suits, presumably searching for Sydney. He increases his pace toward the door — not dressed properly to be going through it, but he will anyway. _Agent training, day three. The authoritative air. Act like you're supposed to be going wherever you're not supposed to be going._

Relief, when his hand is on the knob and Dixon and the suits are still halfway down the hallway, scanning the crowd for a woman who is about to be long gone. Door open, now, and she stands to the side, hands balled into fists and ready.

Her hands relax, drop to her sides. "Vaughn, what the hell is going on?"

"We don't have time," he tells her, reaching out, locking his hand around her arm. "Come on. We've got to move."

The hallway here is long, clean carpeted floor, offices and vending machines at regular intervals. They walk, swift, but not fast enough to arouse suspicion. Left at the corner, says the voice in his ear, and they obey, through a large metal door. Another hallway, but this one smells of oil and heavy machinery, the floor smooth concrete now. Right. Right. Left. Right, into some sort of loading and unloading zone — trucks, crates and ramps. Bay three, says the voice, but he can see it. A smaller truck than the rest here, the driver and the man holding the back door familiar.

They could sprint now, he thinks, but avoids the desire. Wonders if she does the same. They make it, even at the swift walk, and everything loosens inside him when she disappears past the doors, into the back of the truck.

"Phoenix," says the man standing at the door. Agent Preston, he thinks. "You going?"

He hadn't realized it was an option. Now that it is, he needs no time to make the decision. "Yes."

This isn't far enough.


	3. The Place and Time

Chapter 2 — The Place and Time

The door squeals loud on rusty hinges as Preston closes it behind him, and it takes a moment for the dim lights in the truck to flicker and then come on. A small cargo truck, designed for hauling furniture or a new batch of rolls from the local bakery. More commonly used to smuggle drugs — _and people_ — he thinks, stepping through the narrow passageway between two large stacks of brown cardboard boxes.

The boxes only go halfway back — a ruse for the truck's real purpose — and the small space beyond them is well-utilized. A large cooler sits against the left wall — food and drinks, he realizes, for what will be something along the lines of a six-hour drive. A small carry-on suitcase beside that — Sydney's, for her flight to _wherever,_ he assumes. A new-looking mattress takes up the entire right side. She sits on it, next to a neatly folded pile of blue fleece blankets and her discarded baseball cap, back against the wall and knees folded nearly to her chin.

She watches him enter and take a seat on the cooler, body lurching with the truck as it jerks into motion. It picks up speed quickly, boxes rattling beside him through a sharp right turn. The ride is rough, but quieter than he had anticipated. He wonders if the CIA had it insulated, if it is needed frequently enough for that.

Another sharp turn — left, this time — and she speaks, words tumbling, rushing out. "Vaughn, are you sure I have to go? I mean, absolutely sure? SD-6 has suspected me before and it's all worked out. Maybe if we just waited it out, I might not have to go. I could just lay low for awhile — "

"This came down from the top, Syd," he says. Hates that she's desperate, but there's still hope on her face, and he'll have to quash all of it before this conversation is finished. "I'm sorry."

"Does my father know?" Quiet now, almost a whisper.

"He's the one that called it in — said to get you out right away. Sloane knows you're a double. We don't know much more than that at this point. But Dixon came back for you, after you went through the service door. Security Section was with him."

"Oh." She stays silent, eyes blinking steadily. _You can cry, Sydney. Don't let me stop you. _"Can I call my dad, say goodbye? I've still got my phone. It would be secure."

"Sydney, I'm sorry, but your father is under suspicion now at SD-6," he says. "He cut off all contact with the CIA after he called us about you. He can't risk contact with you right now." As they speak, he knows, a group of agents are preparing a nasty car accident featuring her Land Cruiser. 

"I can't say goodbye to anyone, can I?"

He shakes his head.

"Except you." Her eyes shine, even in the dim light. "You didn't have to be here, did you, Vaughn?"

"No." _Not in any official capacity, anyway._

"Thank you." She breaks now, face crumpling into loud sobs, and he stands. Steps gingerly across the truck and kneels on the mattress next to her. Carefully pulls her into an embrace, until her sobs are muffled by his t-shirt.

"I'm so sorry, Sydney."

———

The truck is moving substantially faster, her sobs are less frequent, and these are his only gauges of time. If she wants him to, he thinks, he'll do this until Phoenix. Sit here, stroke her hair, give her all the comfort and the closeness he can.

But his cell phone rings, shrill over her sniffles, and he must release his arms to search his pockets. "That's me." She lifts her head and shifts away. Back to her original position, back against the wall and legs folded. 

"Vaughn here."

"We're on the highway now," Preston says. "You kids okay back there?"

"We're fine." _Or about as good as we're going to get, given the situation._ He glances at Sydney, busy wiping at her face with the back of her hand.

"Vaughn, there's a box back there somewhere, marked 'Fragile.' That's Bristow's package."

"Okay."

"Otherwise, just give me a call if you need anything."

"We will," Vaughn tells him, then hits the end button, focus back on Sydney. "Your package is somewhere in here. Marked 'Fragile.'"

He stands, nearly falling as the truck sways through a lane change, and steps toward the piles. She watches, but makes no attempt to stand and help with the search. She isn't needed — he finds it a few feet away from the edge of the mattress, on the top of the stack. The box is large, and fills his arms when he picks it up, but light.

He moves quickly, deposits it in front of her before another lane change, which would surely be the end of his balance. He considers sitting on the mattress beside her, but takes the cooler instead. Packing tape covers the top of the box, and he rips it off, pulling the flaps open and waiting for her to show some interest in the process.

Interest never comes.

"Come on, Syd. It'll be just like Christmas." He realizes too late that the joke may not be the best way to draw her in. That her Christmases may not be such a good memory, given the Bristow family.

She laughs anyway, over a long, shaky sob. "I don't see a tree, Vaughn."

"Maybe we should check the other boxes."

She smiles and leans forward to pull a wig from the box. Dark brown, almost black, and much shorter than her current cut.

"I take it this is until I can do something more permanent?" He doesn't answer; watches instead, curious, as she begins what must be a familiar process. Hands through her own hair, twisting it together in the back and pulling it up until it is piled on the top of her head. The wig pressed down over all of that and quickly pinned into place. Chin-length, and the dark color lightens her eyes.

"How does it look?"

"Good." _But then, you looked good in blue, Syd._

"Thanks," and a shy smile. She pulls the next item out — black leather purse — and zips it open. "Lipstick, mascara, mirror, lotion, nail file, dental floss, wallet. Who puts all this stuff together?"

"I have no idea."

She snaps open the wallet and looks up. "There's nothing but cash in here."

Vaughn does know the answer to this one. "There'll be a separate envelope with your new identification."

The next item is a leather jacket, a style she'll like, he thinks, pulling it from the box. And he is right, because her eyes come a little closer to Christmas.

"_Nice._ The government paid for that?"

"I think it's the CIA equivalent of a gold watch."

She takes the jacket from him, lays it gently on the mattress. "I'd try it on, but I don't think it's going to work with the maintenance worker look."

"There should be a change of clothes in here." He reaches back into the box, watching her until his hands hit lace. _Whoops. Don't need to go whipping those out. _Eyes focused in the box, now, hands somewhere less embarrassing. Fingers wrapped around the blue jeans at the bottom of the pile, not the black lace underwear on top. He pulls the entire pile out and hands it to her, careful to stay fixated on her face.

She takes it from him, sits it on the mattress next to the jacket. "Thanks. Much better." And then an expectant stare.

Oh.

"I can, ah, move to the back, if you want." Not the safest suggestion, given the pace of the truck, but he isn't sure what else to say.

"No — I mean, that's okay," she says. "We're all adults here."

Right. Adults.

He leans back as she pulls her shoes off. Sets to studying the floor, which is gray-painted metal and not nearly interesting enough to merit this level of contemplation. She must be on the buttons of the coverall by now, he thinks. 

Sight is easy enough to control, but sound is another matter. The swoosh as the coverall leaves her body. The click of the clasp of her bra. Another click as she replaces it with the new bra, and he's got some idea of what this looks like. Black satin and lace, curving over her breasts, a contrast to pale skin.

Just breathe. Normally. Please.

Panties slipping over skin, now, and he wishes he had gone to the back of the truck and battled the boxes. The old pair off, his eyes locked on the floor and he longs for a distraction. Something more normal than clearly focusing on _ not watching_. A file folder to stare at, perhaps, but the only thing close to that in the truck is the packet in the box, and it is just as off-limits as the woman undressing a few feet away from him.

New panties on, and she is dressing quickly, he thinks. _This has to be affecting her, too. You're not even the one half-naked. Maybe she wants you to look. Maybe that's why she wanted you to stay. Maybe she wants you to go over there, and touch her, and make her —_

Jeans swish over the blood pounding in his ears, and he is grateful for the sound of the zipper. _Sweater, and you're home free._

"I'm decent," she announces, and he thinks _maybe_ her voice is a little shaky.

He looks up, catches her eyes for a moment before they dart down to the jacket. She picks it up, slips it on, and this is her now, he realizes. Leather jacket, black turtleneck sweater, hair close-cropped, sleek and dark. _Whoever she is now, she'll look like that. This is Sydney, now, but she's not Sydney. She's the person in the packet. _

She reaches into the box now, pulls out the last of its contents — boots, socks, and the packet. She tends to the footwear first, large tan manila envelope lying beside her, sealed but not labeled. He returns to studying the floor when she picks up the envelope, rips open the seal. Seeing her like this, seeing the new her, is acceptable. But the contents of the packet are too dangerous, he tells himself. And he can guess at them, anyway. Plane ticket. Birth certificate. Social Security card. Driver's license. Credit cards. All bearing the name of whoever Sydney Bristow is now.

Instructions, too, he thinks. What shade to dye her hair. SOP in case of an emergency. What address to go to when she arrives at her destination. A new history, as well, one far less complicated than Sydney Bristow's. Fake mother and father, fake education, fake resume. He listens as she rifles through the papers, then stops.

"Vaughn, this job. It's — "

He looks up, waves his hand to cut her off. Realizes he could have watched her the entire time; she has kept the envelope between him and the papers. "I can't know anything, Syd. Nothing."

"Oh, come on, Vaughn. It's just my occupation."

"I don't want to know." Abrupt. Too abrupt, he thinks. "It's safer for you if I don't know."

"I understand," she whispers. 

Her eyes return to the papers.

———

Silence, as she finishes reading and slips the papers back inside the envelope. She looks sick and frightened, he thinks.

"You okay, Syd?"

She looks up, startled, at his first words in a long while. Chin quivering, eyes filling with sudden tears. "This is really it, isn't it?" A feeble wave of the envelope. "This is my life, now."

"Hey," and he is up, around the box quickly. Sitting beside her on the mattress, slipping an arm around her shoulders. She doesn't protest, leans into him instead, and he continues. "Sydney, you're an amazing person. Now you're going to go off, and make friends, have a career that has nothing to do with being a spy. You're going to do great. And you'll be safe."

"You don't know that for sure, Vaughn."

"I know you."

Silence, again, and he fears that was too much, that he has overstepped the line. _This isn't the place or the time, and maybe there never was a place or a time._ But she shifts, turns so her face is right in front of his, lips _ oh-so-close_ and quivering slightly, the impact of his words clear on her face.

It still shocks him — the pure, perfect sensation as her lips brush his. Soft and cautious, waiting for him to respond. To reassure her as she's reassured him.

Of course, Sydney, of course, and he opens his mouth to her. Too much sensation after years of nothing, he thinks. Too unbelievably good, her tongue sliding over his, the sudden heat of her in his lap, the tingle of her fingers slowly scraping up his neck, lacing through his hair.

Perhaps she understands; perhaps her reasons are her own. But she backs off, breaks the kiss. 

"I need this, Vaughn. I need you," she whispers, lips still so close they graze his mouth. His cheeks are wet with her tears.

He says nothing in response, just kisses her like he's wanted to for years, slowly exploring her lips, her mouth. Hands slipping inside the jacket, beneath her sweater, tracing soft circles on warm skin briefly before pulling her closer. Deepening the kiss, hard and thorough, her chest so close he can feel each quick little breath.

This is it. This is finally it.

She leans now, pushes against him, wants him to lie back against the mattress. This, too, is what he's always wanted. To pull those jeans and the sweater right back off. See — and do — what he's imagined. But not like this. Not on a mattress, in a truck speeding down the highway toward an inevitable end.

This is it. But it's too late. The wrong place and the wrong time.

Because he can't be sure if this is real. If she has wanted this as much as he has, or if he is merely the last thing from her life she can have before it is all gone.

He breaks the kiss this time. "Sydney, we shouldn't — we can't."

"There's no CIA, anymore, Vaughn. There's no protocol," she says, hands on his shoulders and a dark, forceful stare into him. "There's not even a Sydney Bristow anymore."

"Maybe if things were different, Syd — "

"That's what you always say. But things aren't different, Vaughn. They aren't ever going to be different. This is it."

She pushes hard on his shoulders, but he holds a hand up, weak and wavering between them.

"I don't want to remember you this way."

"What way?"

"Here, having — having sex on a mattress in a cargo truck. We're more than that, Sydney. You're more than that."

She releases her grip on his shoulders, drops her hands down to her own lap. "You don't want this?"

"I do." _You can't even imagine how much I do, Sydney._ "But not like this."

Her hands on his now, eyes suddenly strong and resolute. "Then come with me."

"What?"

"Go into hiding with me."

"Sydney, I can't just — "

"Are you sure you're safe? I mean, we don't know how SD-6 found out about me. What if they caught us, saw us meeting? You might be in danger."

"The CIA is looking into that, Sydney, but it's a little premature to just — "

"Would they let you, if you asked to go too?"

"Probably, yes." Although there is no envelope here for him, a detail they would have to work out before they got to Phoenix. Other details, as well. His life in Los Angeles. Friends, family. The mother who would now lose a son to the CIA. But he lets the possibility in.

"Then come with me," she says.

He considers the possibility fully.

They will not get married. There will be no stop in Vegas, no quickie ceremony at some little white church in an equally quaint town. Part of the package, is how it works. The new birth certificates. Social Security cards. Driver's licenses. Resumes. Jobs. New lives. And, by the way, now we're Mr. and Mrs. Somebody — the marriage certificate an item in his envelope.

They will drive, in a new car, to their new home, already filled with boxes, furniture. New items of their new life, to be discovered over the next few days, and Sydney with the Christmas eyes when she finds a particularly pleasing detail. On the first day, however, there will be no discovery. Not of items, anyway.

They will be cautious, tentative, the first time. Make love on the new bed. Each trying to understand just what the other wants, how it should go to be _ right_. Trying to actualize years of attraction, years of wanting, turn it into something else. For one night, at least, it will be wonderful. Many nights, perhaps.

She will tell him in a little diner in Podunk, USA, when the newness has worn off. Rap her nails on the faded formica. Look up over her black-mud coffee with big sad eyes.

"I don't think I love you anymore."

No, he corrects himself. Drop the anymore.

"I don't think I love you."

Perhaps she will phrase it differently. Take some of the weight off.

"I don't think I'm in love with you."

It doesn't matter, he tells himself, forcing his mind to halt the iterations of her fictitious statement.

She will say she does not love him, and he will think that this has been true for awhile. He will realize that love does not grow out of meetings in task force bunkers, dank warehouses and public places where he cannot even look her in the eye. It will not come out of admiration, or respect, or longing, or the things he wants. Then he will tell her the feeling is mutual.

And he will be all alone in the diner in Podunk, USA. Thinking about family, friends, co-workers. To them, he will be dead. To her, a mistake.

How will it feel then, he wonders. Like coming out of a fog after years in the haze? Can she break his heart if it isn't love? The answer is more simple than that. He will feel alone — more alone than he could ever be, in Los Angeles without her.

"Sydney, I can't." _I can't be your mistake._

The tears form again, and she does not fight them. Lets them slip down her cheeks instead, fall on the mattress as she slides off of his lap, away from him. He reaches out, wants to squeeze her shoulder, hold her hand. Do something to make the tears go away again. 

"Don't _touch_ me."

"Sydney, look — "

"Vaughn, just — please, don't talk," she whispers. "Just leave me alone."

He turns as she sobs, considers turning back around and taking her in his arms. Telling her he's sorry, so sorry, and he'll go with her to Podunk, USA and she can leave him whenever she wants. But he keeps going, back to the cooler, and sits there.

It was never an option, and he knows this. But Vaughn wishes he would have stayed at LAX. Watched the truck drive away and take Sydney with it, out of his life. Remembered his image of happy Sydney, laughing with Dixon, not marred by complications and impossible decisions. Not sitting, back against the side of the truck, eyes harsh and pained from the things he's said. 

———

She stops crying, some long, tense period of time later. Wordlessly picks up her new purse and her packet and begins stuffing cards into the wallet.

Say something. You have to say something. Or you're going to get there, and she's going to get off this truck, and that's going to be it. Forever.

"Do you, ah, want something to eat?"

"No. Thank you." Quiet but harsh. "I'm not hungry."

The truck slows, angles down a hill. Exit ramp. _Damn it, you're close and there's no time to fix this._

"Sydney, don't leave like this."

"Leave like what, Vaughn? You don't want to remember me making love. You don't want to remember me angry. Tell me, how do you want to remember me?"

"I don't know." But he does. He wants her from before the kiss and the truck and the tension. Happy Sydney with the big beautiful smile.

"I can leave however I want to, Vaughn. Obviously you don't care."

The truck comes to a sudden halt at that, throwing them both forward as his cell phone rings. He pulls it from his jacket; she begins to collect her things.

"This is Vaughn."

"Sorry about the sudden stop," Preston says. "We're almost there, now. Going to let you two off in a parking garage. Sydney's concourse is right across the street."

"Copy that."

Her new wallet goes into the purse as he hits the end button. "They're going to drop us off in a parking garage. Across the street from your concourse."

"Okay." Manila envelope carefully placed in the outer pocket of her carry-on, pocket zipped and double-checked.

The truck comes to another halt, this one final, and she stands, straightening her jacket, purse over her shoulder and carry-on in hand.

"Sydney, listen — " He struggles for something, one final phrase to dissipate some of her anger, some of her pain. But he finds nothing, and then the truck door is open, Sydney rushing out.

Vaughn follows, the wheels of her carry-on loud on the concrete in front of him, boots clicking fast and dark brown bob swishing as she walks. He could run, shout her name, try to catch up, but considers it too dangerous. There is too much invested in her current cover.

But he follows. Her pace is slowed by a cluster of cars as she crosses the street, enough for him to gain ground. And he catches her, finally, just after they enter the doors to the airport. He grabs her arm and she spins around, but he does not let go.

"I care about you. I always will. Don't you ever think anything else."

She blinks, three times, and he releases her arm.

"I know."


	4. Gatsby

Chapter 3 — Gatsby

They are waiting for him when his plane lands back at LAX. Two junior agents — one, "Come with us, please, Agent Vaughn," in a low voice. They take him to a safehouse, quiz him for six hours. _No, I was never tailed. I never noticed any surveillance. Agent Bristow and I have always been careful. We followed SOP. And I know how to do my fucking job._

Probably not his fault, they tell him, but they have to ask. And nothing is absolute until they get confirmation from Jack Bristow. Then they ask if he took Sydney Bristow's exit statement. He tells them she was too emotionally distraught, and they were more focused on getting her out safely. _Yes, focused on that. Not the biggest decision of your life, and what it did to her._

She has arrived at her new home by now, he knows. Unpacking and discovering alone, and no one there for her when she cries. Extra tears, extra pain on her face. His fault.

Elsewhere, police are telling Will and Francie she is dead. Lost control of her vehicle and wrapped it around a pole or a tree, perhaps drove it off a cliff. Dead either way long before it burst into flames.

He spends the night on a couch in the safehouse. Wordlessly accepts the duffel bag full of clothes and "I'm sorry, man," Weiss brings him in the morning. Takes the duffel bag into the tiny bathroom and wonders how much lonelier Podunk, USA would have felt.

You could have been with her. You could have been together.

———

The CIA gives him a month of paid vacation. Tells him to go somewhere and lay low.

His first vacation since Sydney Bristow walked into the CIA, and he should appreciate the time. Failure, somewhere along the line, to keep an asset placed, but shrug it off, Agent, because you've got to take it when you get it. He decides he'd rather be at work, but he doesn't have a say. 

He drives to Seattle, checks into a downtown Holiday Inn. Goes to baseball games and takes walks in the rain. Sleeps with his gun on the nightstand and reaches for it when his next door neighbors stumble in at three in the morning, slamming their room door shut behind them. Finds he can't get back to sleep before the sound of them fucking reaches him through the wall.

He finds a bookstore on the sixth day's walk. Realizes he knew little about that part of Sydney's life — the life she wanted to have. Thinks he made the right decision, but walks inside anyway. Browses the aisles, looking for a way to connect, now, when it is too late.

Literature, that much is easy. Oak shelves next to the coffee shop, people sitting at little round tables, reading books they don't intend to buy. The strong thick smell of espresso — he's quickly growing tired of it — and steam hissing next to him as he stands, overwhelmed by the titles. Too many to choose from, and not enough background to make a choice. Easy enough to rule out a few he remembers from college, the ones by Russian authors. He scans, waits for something to jump out. Halts finally on a title and a memory.

I've got to go. I've got a Gatsby paper due in four hours.

He remembers her smiling as she glanced at her watch. That he launched into her countermission at their next meeting, didn't think to ask how the paper went. But it must have been good; he can't imagine anything else from her.

He pulls the paperback from the shelf, feels a little strange with just _ The Great Gatsby_ in his hand, and heads to the magazines, grabs a _Sports Illustrated_, before he checks out.

There is a liquor store five doors down from the bookstore, and he buys a local pinot noir and a corkscrew. Heads back to drink it from a hotel room water glass and read the book he's not even sure she liked.

———

Jack Bristow risks contact in the middle of the twelfth day, fifth book, and sixth bottle of wine. A brief, coded message to his own handler.

They send Weiss to collect him, tell him he can go home, that SD-6 is not aware of his existence. Sydney's cover blown, instead, by a failed countersurveillance device and an ill-timed conversation with Will Tippin where she referenced the CIA. Just once, but enough for Arvin Sloane to step up scrutiny. To eventually set her up, catch her making a switch on this last mission. Watching from Marshall-hacked video feed as she swapped documents SD-6 wanted with the ones the CIA had created, and unknowingly sealed her fate.

He packs quickly, feels relieved. There will be no protection program for him, no packet. No lonely trip in the back of the truck to some other airport. No sliding the key into the lock of his new house and thinking he could have done this with her, their marriage license in the packet and his arm around her waist as they step inside.

No, he'll go back to his normal life. Normal life minus Sydney. But she's safe somewhere, and she'll be happy, he tells himself. _And you'll move on. You have to._

———

He goes home and reconnects. Calls his mother, sister, friends, and tells them he wants to talk to them, see them. Wants to remember why he stayed. Lunch, dinner, trips to the bar. Weiss says he's turned into a regular social animal.

———

Barnett tells him at his first required meeting that many handlers feel a sense of failure when they lose an agent — even when it's not their fault at all. She wants him to talk, tell her if he has these feelings. Especially, she says, given his relationship with Ms. Bristow.

He tells her he had a professional relationship with Agent Bristow. It's funny, she says. _Agent_ Bristow said exactly the same thing about him, and rather adamantly.

He does not ask her about feelings of regret.

———

He leaves work early his first day back. Stays late the second, although he really doesn't have anything to work on — his primary responsibility gone and hiding now. But it feels productive to sit there and read over-analyzed intelligence. 

A knock on the door at 5:15. His secretary, Susan. Short, lithe and blond, standing in the doorway, purse in hand.

"I'm on my way out. Did you need anything else?"

"No, thanks."

"I'm glad you're back safe. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow." She fiddles with the purse strap, looks like she wants to say something else. Remind him, maybe, that he really should go home. That there's nothing of great importance to do here. It is Tuesday and he's got nothing on his suddenly burgeoning social calendar until Thursday night. Nothing at home but his empty apartment, and he's in no big hurry to get there.

"Wait," he says. "Are you doing anything for dinner?"

Probably a mistake. But he's not quite sure what a mistake is anymore.

———

He takes her to the little Italian restaurant, the one formerly reserved for Sydney. Orders a bottle of wine, suggests the eggplant parmesan, and tells himself to throw everything reserved for Sydney out the window.

Considers Susan, instead — punctual, accurate, attentive Susan. She's not unattractive, he decides, although he hasn't exactly been paying attention for the last few years. She has been his secretary for the last five, and he knows the basics — her birthday, that she's single, that her favorite color must be purple, because it shows up time and again on shirts, scarves, jewelry. 

"So," she says, fork full of spaghetti and eyes a little sleepy from the wine. "Have you been able to get back to playing?"

"Playing?"

"Hockey. Now that your schedule's a little — a little more regular."

"Oh." She knows plenty about him, he thinks, gleaned from phone calls and minding his schedule. "No. Not yet. I haven't really thought about it. I'm still trying to get settled."

"You should. I mean, before you get weighed down with another agent."

He had never considered Sydney a weight, a burden, but he keeps this to himself. "That's what they told me about my vacation time, too. Get while the getting's good."

She laughs. "Where did you go, anyway?"

"Seattle."

"You a big fan of rain?"

"Baseball."

"Ah." Her index finger runs circles around the rim of her wineglass. "I was really afraid — for you."

She looks up, blushes in the candlelight, and he's missed all of this, he thinks. Her knowledge and her concern and her sense of humor. He thinks of many things to say — _I didn't realize you cared enough to worry, I've never noticed how pretty your eyes are_ — none of them appropriate, and so he lets them lapse into silence instead. Gives her a smile and waits for the topic to settle.

"This is really good, by the way," she says, finally, gesturing with her fork. "How did you ever find this place?"

"I live a couple blocks down."

"You know," she gives him a bold wine smile. "I don't think I've ever seen your apartment."

You have to do it. You have to move on. Moving on means it wasn't a big mistake. "You're welcome to the grand tour, if you'd like."

———

She doesn't see much of his apartment, even when they get there. Doorknob turned, two steps inside, a quick glance at his sparse living room. "Very nice," she says. And then her hand is on his shoulder, pulling him into her, lips aggressive on his.

He likes the way she kisses. Likes that there's been no pretense tonight, that they've been clearly headed in this direction and he's seen it coming. Hasn't doubted it, hasn't second guessed himself. Likes her hands on his arms, back, ass. This isn't the right way to move on, he thinks, but maybe there is no right way to move on.

Hands on his jacket, and it is gone quickly. "I'm glad they let you come back," she says, pulling at his tie.

"Me too." A lie, although he's trying desperately to make it the truth.

Shirt buttons next, together, her stumbling through the starch of his dress shirt, him an easier time with her sweater. Standard, drab CIA secretary gray, as distinctly unprovocative as the rest of her wardrobe. But she surprises him, halfway down, with red and black lace. He traces the border between bra and skin with his thumb, wonders what else she hides under the plain exterior.

And everything about her systematic march through his clothing has a well-planned feel to it. Dress shirt down and away from his shoulders. T-shirt up over his head and her hands raking up over his chest. How long has she wanted this, he wonders. Was there a difference in her tone when she told him Alice called? Were there jealous looks when he left the office to meet with Sydney?

He wonders how long he's been in the fog, how many signals he has missed. How many chances he has passed up. How good things could have been with Susan already if he'd noticed it all long before now.

Hands at his belt now, insistent.

"Not in here." He takes her hand, leads her to his bedroom.

Calls it accepting reality.

———

Always-punctual Susan is twenty minutes late to work the next morning, and he says nothing. Manages to greet her without his voice wavering. Wonders what she wears beneath the purple silk blouse.

He gives her half an hour to get settled, then calls her into his office and tells her to shut the door. She sits on his couch, cheeks red, and waits for him to speak.

"Last night was — it was probably too soon." _Or not soon enough. Or who the fuck even knows anymore_. "But I would like to see you again."

"Oh." She is surprised. Pleased. 

He asks her what she's doing on Friday. Nothing, she smiles.

And on Friday he does it right. Flowers and a fancy restaurant and he spends the date searching for things about her he likes. Searching, and finding, and he thinks maybe — _just maybe_ — this will all work, and there will be no mistake.

———

Two months later, she walks into his office again and closes the door. 

"I can't do this anymore," she tells him. "Every time you wake up, you're disappointed I'm not her."

He had thought he was better at hiding it than that.

She requests a transfer. His new secretary is pushing 60, and he doesn't intend to make that mistake again, anyway.

———

There is a globe in his office, the bigger, better-decorated one that came with the promotion Sydney got him. Obsolete and out of date, but still nice to look at, he used to think. Now he stares at it, thinks about geography and his former agent.

She is somewhere, and this is still all he knows. Somewhere cold and tiny and Midwest, the perfect place to hide a formerly valuable asset. And he will never ask where. Never dig for coordinates, the name of a town.

Because he does not want to know. Tells himself he would only feel the need to search it out on every map he sees. To look it up on some dot-com yellow pages site and calculate the travel time and driving distance from L.A. To wonder if she gets her car serviced at Ned's Muffler. To learn the name of their diner. To drive himself crazy until he _has got to_ drive out there, show up on her doorstep. Break all the rules and put her in danger.

This is one way he could see her again — to destroy the happiness and safety he's created for her in his mind. The other is to take down SD-6, the Alliance. Make it safe for her to return, for a tearful reunion with Will and Francie. They would send him to get her, he thinks, tell him to drive out there and show up on her doorstep. He imagines her standing there, staring in shock, then rejecting him, as he did her. _I'm happy here, Vaughn. I don't want to leave, but why don't you come in and meet my husband, you fucking asshole?_ She'll stay, he thinks, but she'll never doubt the decision. Never wonder if it was a mistake.

He works to take down SD-6 anyway, because it is a firm, tangible goal — the only one he has. But progress has slowed, nearly to a halt, with a gaping hole that became clear shortly after they lowered Sydney's empty coffin into the ground. Jack Bristow's intelligence is valuable, but not as useful without a field agent to make switches, withhold intel, and cut SD-6 off at the source.

———

Six months after he buries his daughter, three months after he reports he is no longer under suspicion at SD-6, Jack Bristow takes a risk. He recruits Marcus Dixon, a quick, devastating process marked with irrefutable proof of SD-6's true purpose.

The risk pays off. Dixon becomes the CIA's newest double agent.

Vaughn learns he is no longer agentless when Devlin calls him into his office and tells him to prep for their first meeting later that evening. This relieves him — it means no more time being shuttled amongst departments that claim they need more manpower, poring over SD-6 intel in every extra minute he can steal. He will have to hurry to prepare, but the sudden need and urgency is refreshing.

Back in his office, Dixon's angry, sad statement goes into a new manila file folder. "Dixon, Marcus," scribbled on the tab, carefully so the ink won't smudge. He rolls open his filing cabinet and can't help but look at "Bristow, Sydney," by far the thickest.

On most days, he is able to ignore it. But there is a sad familiarity in Dixon's pages of betrayal, meticulously detailed, and it brings him back to the beginning. He lets himself pull it out, flip through the pages, lingering on her picture. This one is stern, professional — nothing like the smiling, happy Sydney he remembers. But it helps him make sure the version in his mind is accurate, when she starts to fade.

Other pictures in her file, as well, including the one that always makes him pause. Daniel Hecht, a lopsided smile destined for his hospital ID badge, acquired posthumously by the CIA. His name was always _Danny_, Vaughn remembers, soft and loving from her lips. Always a reminder of who he couldn't be. Who he wasn't.

The man who would have shared her life, had things gone differently. The man she said yes to. The man she loved enough to tell the truth. All of it.

A place, he used to think, she would never completely fill again. But he had always wanted the chance. Wanted that kind of love with her. 

He still does, he realizes. And knows, fully, what has been creeping around the edges of his consciousness for months. It was a mistake, he thinks. A mistake not to try. There was a chance — remote, maybe, but a chance — it would have worked.

And maybe he underestimated the payoff. Overestimated the risks. Should have known that this was how it would go. That he would struggle to get past her, to move on, and never really succeed. That he would grow angry at mother, sister, friends, for being what he couldn't leave behind. That there would be Susan, and more women after her, and none of them would be Sydney, or even anything close. That he would rather be alone, with resolution, than here, where he can only wonder.

———

Dixon, he finds, is curt but polite. Accepts his countermission quietly, and doesn't argue about the plan, ask him if he's in junior high. He has only one question, the same one Will Tippin did.

"She's not really dead, is she?"

He responds with the same lie he gave Tippin. Sydney Bristow, dedicated agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, found out and driven off the road by SD-6 Security Section. Car wrapped around tree and in flames before anyone could help. Most definitely dead.

She's not dead at all. And she was worth the risk.

———

He finds he likes meeting with Dixon. Likes doling out countermissions and having a purpose again. And they are making progress. Dixon has been paired with a green agent, someone without the experience to notice the more daring switches they attempt now. And Jack Bristow, the scrutiny for his daughter's wrongdoings fading with time, works to bring down SD-6 with an almost frightening focus. Vaughn still fears none of it will be enough, that they will never be able to bring her back. Never bring him resolution.

The anniversary of her "death" arrives, nearly passes without him noticing. Because she is as gone on this day as she is any other. But Dixon mentions putting flowers on her grave; Weiss stops by his office and asks if he wants to go out, grab a beer. He drives until he finds a Borders and buys a book instead.

———

October comes uncharacteristically cold, but he likes it because it matches his mood most of the time. Windy and gray as he steps out his front door, car keys in hand and ready for a meeting with Dixon. Maybe a storm coming, he thinks, pounding down the front steps, coat flapping.

He never sees the red dot on his chest, but he hears the first shot. Knows in that instant that somehow, inexplicably, SD-6 has identified him. Knows with absolute certainty that it was a mistake, and he'll never have a chance to correct it.

This is his last thought before everything goes black.


	5. Could Have

Chapter 4 — Could Have

Bloomington, Illinois, population 64,808, lies 125 miles southwest of Chicago and 155 miles northeast of St. Louis, where Interstate highways 39, 55 and 74 converge. One of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in Illinois, it contains two universities and three hospitals, one of which is St. Joseph Medical Center.

Vaughn wakes in a room there, to pain. Ambiguous at first, the mere feeling that things with his body are not right, and he isn't where he's supposed to be.

Shoulder. Hospital bed. Fuck.

He forces things into focus, looks around. Tries to think of the last thing he remembers, which is more pain and falling to the ground. Halts his hazy scan of the room on an unfamiliar face.

"Nice of you to wake up, Mike," the face tells him. "I've been babysitting your ass for two weeks."

He blinks, tries to remember, but nothing comes. "Do I know you?"

The face gives him a look that says _yes_, a little too emphatically. "Peter? From work? Man, you must have some kind of memory loss or something."

No, don't think so. He runs through the details of his life — name, address, occupation, family, friends — and decides they're all still intact. Intact, but perhaps no longer accurate.

"Peter" confirms this by pulling a standard CIA-issue imitation Cross pen from his shirt pocket and pulling it apart until a click and a beep tell him it is safe to talk.

"Gotta talk quick. They couldn't make this one as powerful, on account of all the hospital machines," Peter says. "You were shot, two weeks ago. Twice in the shoulder, massive blood loss, lucky to be alive, blah blah blah. They pulled you and brought you here. I don't know much beyond that, and you're Michael Henderson now. I'm Peter Hayes. We work together at Baxter Insurance. Any questions?"

Only a million. His mind is reeling from the assumptions in Peter's statement. _Protection program. Michael Vaughn is dead. Family, friends, all think he's dead. Mom. Damn it, Mom, I'm sorry. No time for that. Focus on now._ "I don't know anything about insurance."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. I'll drive you home when they release you, and get you your packet. We can talk more then."

Your packet. Who else got a packet? Who else was made? Dixon. Jack. Fuck. "Do you know anything about any of the other agents on my case? Were they compromised? Did they get them out, too?"

Peter shakes his head. "Sorry, man. I have no idea."

Why don't you know? Shouldn't you know? And what the hell do you know? "Peter, where exactly are we?"

"Bloomington, Illinois." Another beep signals the end of safe conversation. "So I guess you can't remember how you got here, huh?"

Suppose the official version doesn't involve SD-6 Security Section. "No."

"Disgruntled client, man. We turned down his wife's surgery, high-risk and all. Which sucked, but we have rules, you know? I don't even think you handled the claim, but you were the first one he saw when he came in. Opened fire. It was some bad shit."

"Oh."

"Listen," Peter says. "I'm going to go grab some food and a coffee. You get some rest so you can heal and we can get you the hell out of here."

Good idea. The faster you get out of here, the faster you find out just who the hell you are now.

———

It takes a week for the pain to grow dull and his doctor to deem it time for him to go home. 

Michelle, the nurse — young, pink scrubs and blue eyes, black hair in a French braid — bustles in with this news and his breakfast. She has been kind to him since he's been conscious, which he suspects is because he's been a model patient. Too busy worrying quietly about his uncertain future to raise a fuss. His reward has been extra Jello at dinner and her quick entrance on the rare occasions he hits the call button.

"Your boyfriend dropped off a change of clothes for you last night, but you were already asleep and I told him not to wake you." She points to a duffel bag on the chair beside his bed, then leans closer to him. "It's against hospital policy, but I let him stay way past visiting hours," she whispers conspiratorially. "He was just so dedicated it broke my heart. You two must make such a sweet couple."

He's still trying to come up with a way to correct her without blowing his cover when Peter walks in.

"You ready to go?"

"Let him finish his breakfast and get changed," Michelle says, shooing him from the room.

He gags down as much breakfast as he can, then struggles through a sweatshirt, sweatpants and the sling for his left arm. Not quite sure if it's still supposed to hurt this much, but given the choice between pain and not knowing, he'd rather go with the pain.

Michelle and Peter both insist on the wheelchair, and he doesn't protest. Just sits, says goodbye to Michelle, and lets Peter roll him away.

"Best of luck, you two!" Michelle calls out behind them.

"What the hell was that about?" Peter asks.

"You don't want to know."

———

Peter's car is dull, black, mid-size and American. Vaughn knows the car, typical CIA; he's driven something similar for the last seven years and hated it. The car hits a pothole square a few minutes into the drive, jarring his shoulder, and he winces at the impact.

"Sorry, man," Peter says. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

It is the only semblance of a conversation they have during the drive, which is fine with Vaughn. He busies himself with staring out the window, studying the city. Autumn trees, red and orange and gold, which he had a glimpse of from his hospital room window. More vibrant now that he can see more, trees lining the streets and leaves piled along the curbs. They've left commerce, noticeably sparser and smaller than Los Angeles, he thinks, and turned onto a residential street.

Peter turns again, this street a mixture of small houses, duplexes and slightly larger apartment buildings. He parks on the street outside one, tan brick and three stories high.

Vaughn exits the car rather ungracefully, but he manages, before Peter walks around to the passenger side. A few steps toward the building, then Peter points to another dull black sedan parked a few cars up the street.

"That's your car. Key's on this ring, along with the one to your apartment, which is — " he flips through the keys until he reaches one, a piece of masking tape with a number scrawled in ballpoint pen stuck to the top " — number 207. Which means it's up the stairs. Sorry about that. You going to be able to make it up?"

"I'll manage."

The stairway is full of dried leaves and smells musty. He does manage to make it up; only needs to stop once, right hand wrapped around the handrail until the throbbing stops.

Peter slips the key into the lock, turns it, and there is a brief, scary moment when it seems it will not open. "Damn trick locks," he mumbles. "Had one like this in college." A thunk of something coming loose, and then Peter turns the knob, opens the door. "For future reference, you've got to turn it until it feels like it's going to break." He follows Vaughn inside and shuts the door behind them. "Welcome to your humble abode."

It is as sparse as his apartment in Los Angeles, but the sparseness here bothers him. _Maybe that's because you might actually be spending time here._ A spacious living room on his right, and everything inside looks new, a stark contrast to the musty hallway. Tan carpet, blue couch and chairs, television, DVD player. Kitchen, to the left, and a bedroom or bedrooms, he assumes, farther down the hallway that runs through the place.

"Two-bedroom, in case you're wondering," Peter says. "I think they set up one as an office. Computer, fax machine and whatnot. Pretty decent place, all and all. But I know you're interested in this — "

Vaughn follows him into the living room and watches as he pulls a manila envelope out from beneath the middle couch cushion. Vaughn sits in one of the chairs and takes the envelope. His hands are shaking, he realizes, as he rips open the top.

All the things inside that he expected in Sydney's packet. Birth certificate. Social Security card. Driver's license. Credit card. Instructions, pages and pages of them. Pages and pages of his history, as well.

"I know you said you don't know anything about insurance. Don't worry about that. Baxter is a front company for — "

"Don't." He waves his good hand, _stop talking, damn it_, and Peter seems surprised. "Don't talk about it here."

"You've got a bugkiller. Right there in the phone." Peter walks over to one of the end tables, picks up the phone base resting there and pops a piece of plastic off the bottom. Wires, transistors, and a red light beneath. "Light's on. Relax. You're good."

"I don't trust those things," Vaughn tells him. "I lost an agent because one failed."

This surprises Peter. "I'm sorry. He die?"

Vaughn shakes his head, slightly; any more, he's learned, and it hurts. "She. We got her out. She's in the protection program."

"You know the odds of that are like astronomical," Peter says, sitting on the couch.

"Yeah." _One of 356 of that model. Four of 50,232 in Agency history. Throw in the NSA and the odds only get better. Or more absurd, if you're Sydney._

"At any rate, Baxter is a front company for the Agency. You won't be doing any insurance work."

"I worked for the Agency."

"So did I. We still do. Just not as the people we were." It makes sense, now, to him. Peter's eyes, a little too blue. Hair a little too light. Altogether _ not quite natural_ upon close examination.

"You're in the protection program, too."

"Bingo. So when you've got questions, I might just have some answers."

"I've got one."

Peter leans back against the couch. "Shoot."

"My first name, they kept it the same. Do they do that often?"

"Yes, when your first name is Michael. It's pretty common, but I'm sure you knew that. By the way, you prefer Mike or Michael?"

"Either is fine." _A lot of the people that mattered called you Vaughn, but that's not exactly an option anymore. _"Pete or Peter?"

"Peter, definitely. Pete bugs me." He glances at his watch. "Look, I've got to get going. Look through your packet, and give me a call if you need anything. Come into work whenever you're ready. There's no rush."

He starts toward the door, but turns when he reaches it. "You've got to make the first year, Mike. Make the first year and it gets better."

———

Vaughn skims the pages from the envelope first, hungrily, wanting the basics as fast as he can get them. The details are mundane, for the most part, specifically designed to be unremarkable. Born in Chicago, but his parents moved around throughout his youth. So, he assumes, he'll never have to provide details on a specific place. 

Michael Henderson's fictitious parents were killed in a car accident when he was 17, he reads, but their son persevered. Went to college at UCLA — the only thing from the package thus far, besides his name, that has meshed with his previous life. _Guess college is tough to fake._ His major — accounting — is far different, however.

Pages and pages of history, and he'll have to memorize them over the next few days. Pages and pages of the present, as well, he finds. He'll have lighter hair now, and hazel eyes. _Which shouldn't scare you in the least, given that you've never worn contacts or dyed your hair._

Directions to Baxter Insurance, the hospital, the closest grocery store. Bank account numbers. Dates he can expect bills. Phone number for Peter, another for his landlord. When his car is due for an oil change. And, in bold red numbers, centered in the middle of the last page, his emergency contact number. He memorizes this one first, stares until the red numbers are still there when he closes his eyes. Repeats it under his breath, over and over again, until he's sure it's permanent. But he'll still give himself a day, check the red number on the paper in the morning and make sure it matches the one in his head. If it does, he'll burn the paper. The rest of the instructions will follow, too, as soon as they're locked into memory.

For now he stands, stiff, and walks over to the kitchen to inspect the contents of his refrigerator. Someone — Peter, perhaps — has stocked it with microwave meals and cold cuts. There's a loaf of bread on the counter, and he throws together a sandwich, one-handed. He eats it quickly, then searches the cabinets until he finds a glass. There was a six-pack of Coke in the fridge, but no bottled water, so he assumes tap is safe and pours a glass. A few sips from that and then he searches the rest of the cabinets, taking inventory and orienting himself.

He walks through the small eating area — filled with a little oak table and two chairs — toward the bathroom. Jade green tiling, green shower curtain and towels there. Among the contents of the medicine cabinet are two boxes of hair dye and a package of colored contact lenses. He decides he'll wait until tomorrow to attempt poking his eyes out, and walks back into the hallway.

The smaller bedroom is on the left — desk, filing cabinet, computer, printer, phone and fax machine. A bed and small dresser, as well. _Office and guest bedroom. How thoughtful. Might even be useful, if you knew anyone that could serve as a guest_. An empty bookshelf fills the last available space on the wall. This pleases him, and he decides he'll start to fill it soon.

For now, there is one room left, his bedroom, and he's ready for it — too many hours upright, now, after spending most of three weeks in a hospital bed. Oak furniture, double bed, and he slips beneath the blue quilted bedspread.

He lets the inevitable thoughts in, because they've been coming for awhile now. Thinks about Sydney, walking through her new apartment, discovering. _You made her do this alone. You could have done this with her. _Sydney, sleeping alone in her new bed the first night. _How long did she sleep alone? Did she move on, like you couldn't? Is she glad you said no? _

She is past the first year now, he thinks, settled into her new life. _ Would she even want to come back? Would she want to see you, if whoever's left on SD-6 managed a miracle?_

The sheets are cold, his shoulder aches, and he's never felt farther from her.

———

The worst thing about the new apartment, he decided quickly, was the lack of _things_. No old newspapers piled on the end tables. No ice skates sitting haphazard in the corner of his bedroom. No dog bowl nosed into the middle of his kitchen floor by an overzealous Donovan (a thought that made him wonder, again, just what had happened to the poor dog). Bare necessities, only — a big, empty shell of an apartment, and he's tried to fill it over the last week.

Discovered he had a cable modem, went to amazon.com and ordered five favorites to start the bookshelf. Bought a new pair of ice skates, as well, and realized — after yet another physical therapy session — that it was going to be awhile before he would be able to use them. Paid for everything with his new credit card. 

He's given himself a week — all he could handle before the old urge for productivity took over. Up with the alarm at 6 a.m. this morning, contacts in without much of a struggle, staring at the meager contents of his closet now. Something else he'll have to rectify with the new credit card; for now he decides on business casual. The sling is gone, and he's probably got enough mobility with his left arm now, but it is a perfect excuse to forego the tie, and he'll take it as long as it flies.

What's left in his coffee mug is bitter and lukewarm, but he downs it anyway. He does a final check of the contents of his wallet, struggles awkwardly into his coat, and takes a deep breath before he heads out the door.

Baxter Insurance is located in a small cluster of commerce five blocks away from his house, on the fringe of downtown Bloomington. An old brick building, separated from an equally old brick plaza by a small alley. Parking is a small concrete lot across the street, used mostly for customers of the plaza's tenants — Chinese buffet, video rental store, cell phone dealer and dollar store — and the new chain drugstore next to the lot.

Vaughn knows all of this already; he drove the city three days ago when the contents of his fridge began to run low. There's a Kroger down the street, he recalls, with an elderly cashier who looked at the sling and insisted on calling someone to help him.

He keeps his left hand anchored in his coat pocket as he walks across the street toward his new workplace. Pauses for a moment outside the door and tries to quell his nerves.

The door opens into a small reception area. An ancient couch and table against the wall beside him, a stack of magazines resting on the table. The top magazine is a 1994 _People_. A 50-something woman sits behind a desk on the far wall. Most of her hair is dark brown, but there's a good two inches of gray roots, and she looks committed.

She looks up as soon as he walks in. "It's good to finally meet you," she smiles, standing and walking around the desk. "I'm Helen Curtis."

"Michael Henderson." He holds out his hand, delivers it well; he's practiced it in the shower all week.

"Peter's in the back, through that door. Go on in. Right now the passcode is your birthday. You can talk to him about changing it to something more secure." Helen returns to her desk and her near-finished romance novel.

Vaughn panics for a moment, can't remember his birthday, but he finds it, somewhere amidst all the other new numbers in his mind. The door Helen pointed to leads to a short hallway — restrooms on the right and a conference room that looks like it hasn't been used in years on the left. Another door at the end of the hallway, and a small panel beside it. He punches the passcode in and the door opens to a startlingly modern room.

White walls, bright lighting. Three computer desks, newish computers on two of them. A much less ratty couch on one wall, a large table on another. Peter is seated at the table, next to a stack of file folders. He swings his chair around at Vaughn's entrance. He is wearing khakis and a sweater. _No more ties. Score one for the new job._

"Mike! I was getting a little worried," he says. "You didn't call. I was thinking about stopping by if you didn't show up by the weekend."

"I figured you'd had enough of me over the last couple weeks."

"Don't ever worry about calling, man. How are you feeling?"

"Better."

"Good to hear it. You get a chance to see much of the city?"

"I drove around a couple days ago. And I did some searching on the Internet."

"So you got all the basics?" Peter asks. "It's pretty typical Midwest. Twin city with Normal, largest employer State Farm Insurance — which, obviously, is actually _for-real_, unlike us. Oh, and the only manufacturer of beer nuts in the world. Some claim to fame, huh?"

"Yeah."

"I assume you met Helen?" Vaughn nods. "She's great. Mandatory retired, FBI. She worked white collar crime, so she fakes the insurance stuff. We don't have a whole lot of clients. Why don't I give you the rest of the grand tour?"

"There's more?"

"Yeah. You haven't seen all the important stuff." He points to another door beside the table. "That leads to the alley. It's another double door, passcode-protected, like the one you came through. Ladder there — " He points to a metal ladder, hanging halfway down the wall next to the door. " — leads to the roof. It's bolted from the inside, so don't try any Batman entrances. Come on with me and I'll show you the basement."

Vaughn follows him to the last door in the room, next to the couch, down a narrow set of stairs. There is another door at the bottom of the stairs, and Peter opens it to a pseudo-living room.

"Fully functioning safehouse, down here. Building's old, so it's a little damp, but it works. We're in charge of operating it, keeping it stocked. We get people here once every couple months or so. Usually as a stop for somebody they're trying to move across the country quietly."

Back upstairs, he takes a seat on the couch — leather, and comfortable. Peter takes a desk chair. "I've been working at this machine, if you want to take the other one. Alt F6 in case of emergency. It'll torch your hard drive, so don't use it lightly."

"What exactly do we do here, besides running the safehouse?"

"They let us putz around with low-level intel, that sort of stuff. A lot of cybersnooping, wandering through bulletin boards for sports and porn, mostly. Not a bad job, all in all." He pauses. "What?"

"Nothing. I guess I just thought they stuck you at the post office in some little podunk town."

"I think that's people that testify against the mob, buddy. The government is too poor not to keep your ass working at something. What was your major in college, your real major?"

"Political science."

"I'm international politics. We're not exactly the most employable people, anymore. You can't run for office, because that would do real bad things to your cover real quick. So there's not much left besides working for the government. At least I think that's their thinking. One thing you figure out pretty quick about the protection program, and that's nobody knows shit about the program."

Maybe, just maybe... "Do you know anyone else in the program?"

"Nope. There was Bob, but he left six months ago. Got cleared to go back. And don't get your hopes up on that one. Bob, he was some kind of statistical anomaly. I was happy for him, though. He had a family, meant the kids got to see their grandparents again and whatnot."

"Isn't it dangerous, having multiple people in the program together at the same business? In the same city?"

"Yes and no. I think it lets them focus their resources better than if we're scattered all over the place. The other side of that is that they're more fucked if the location is compromised. Which reminds me. You find yourself in trouble, big trouble, you call your emergency contact first. Then you call me. Tell me you lost a hundred bucks on Saturday's game and get the hell out of town. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. If you think we've both been compromised, tell me you lost a thousand instead."

"Okay."

"Any more questions?"

"Yeah. What's the rule on — are we allowed to leave the city? Go to Chicago, or St. Louis?"

"I'm not sure if we're supposed to. You can tell they put some thought into Bloomington. Small enough that nobody looking for us is going to have operatives here, big enough for you to get lost in the shuffle. That said, I've done it." He laughs. "Any particular reason?"

"Pro sports, mostly."

"Good to hear. You a fan of any of the teams around here?"

"Not really. I've always wanted to go to a game at Wrigley Field, though."

"Next summer, you're on. We'll drive up, sit in the bleachers and drink beer." Peter pauses. "And I think that's enough for the first day for you. Unless you had more questions."

"Nope."

"Good. Then get out of here." Peter swings toward the monitor, then back around. "Wait. You play ball?"

"Yeah. Well, not lately."

"Of course. Once the shoulder gets better, I'll get you into my gym. Saturdays at noon. They're good guys — I think you'll like them."

"Great. Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow." _And maybe, somehow, you're really going to get through this._


	6. Prospects

Chapter 5 — Prospects

The structure emerges at six weeks. Up at six. At work by 7:50. Home just after five. Physical therapy Tuesday and Thursday nights, grocery shopping at the Kroger Wednesdays. He's never had an eight-to-five job, and the regularity of it startles him.

Peter lets him take the analysis today, and he sits at the table with a pile of satellite photos, pen and a legal pad. He was cleared at least five levels higher than these photos at his old job, but he'll work diligently. Scour the mundane and hope that something he does makes some progress somewhere, preferably on the SD-6 case. Peter, it seems, is past that feeling.

"I've been to 23 sports bulletin boards so far this morning, and no terrorist activity," he says. There's no such thing as a long silence in the same room as Peter, Vaughn has learned. "But I am going to have the best fantasy basketball team ever. Oh, yes, I am."

Vaughn laughs, although he's still not sure if he finds it funny. "Is this all a joke to you?"

"Pretty much. Give it enough time and it'll be a joke for you too."

Maybe, he thinks. Maybe, when there is enough distance from the stress of his old job, the sleepless nights and 2 a.m. phone calls.

There is still some of that left in Peter, he suspects, masked by the humor. He asked, a few weeks in, what Peter's real name was, thought maybe in the safe stark white of work he would rather be whomever he had been. He got an abnormally blunt response. _"My real name is Peter Hayes."_

He's tried again, sporadically. Pried a few things loose — knows Peter is 31 years old and six years into the protection program, and little else. Not enough to determine whether a bad ending or a good thing left behind is the reason for Peter's steadfast adherence to his current identity.

He'll keep trying, he thinks, until they're deep enough into a friendship for the truth. For now, he laughs at the jokes and takes his pointless job seriously.

"Hey, Mike, we're breaking for lunch in 15. Hope you don't mind, but I invited a friend of mine. Lisa Tucker. She works in marketing at State Farm. Smart, funny. Hot."

Here it is. You knew this was coming. He's been hinting at it for a good week, now. And you knew you wouldn't be ready. "Are you trying to set me up?"

"Only if you two click." Peter leans back in his chair and grins. "Otherwise, I just invited my friend to lunch."

And why didn't the two of you click? Why have you been itching to set me up when you're alone? "Peter, look. I appreciate the thought, but I don't think I'm ready to — I'm just getting settled into this life."

"Just go to lunch, Mike, and give it a try."

That's the problem. I've been giving it a try for more than a year now, and it never works.

———

They snag Helen from the dingy front office and venture further downtown than usual. A tiny seafood place, faux netting and driftwood everywhere, and it _ has got to_ be too far from a coast to have anything fresh, he thinks, but says nothing. Lisa is there already, waiting for them at a table in the back. Tall and fit in a newish suit, blue eyes and blond hair pulled back in a clip. She has a nice smile.

"Lisa, how are you?" Peter asks. He doesn't wait for an answer. "You know Helen already, and this is Michael Henderson."

"Hi. Nice to meet you." Her smile widens a bit, and her handshake is firm. _ As much a prospect as anyone else has ever been. Except Sydney. She just skipped that stage and went straight from nothing to everything._

He sits with the rest of the group and realizes he's only a few minutes in and already thinking about Sydney. _Just great. New personal record. This is going to go well. _

Their waitress arrives and Lisa recommends the salmon, which sounds about as safe as anything on the menu, and gives him a chance to order it and smile at her and tell himself this could work.

"So, Mike," Peter says. "Lisa here's probably too modest to tell you this, but she can thump me pretty well in a game of one on one."

Lisa's pale cheeks flush a little, and she takes a sip of water. "Yeah. I played ball in college. Illinois State."

The plot thickens. Knows sports, plays sports. Maybe there's hope for you yet. "What position?" Vaughn asks.

"Power forward." She smiles again.

"She started, what, sophomore, junior and senior years, Lis?"Peter asks.

"Yeah. So where did you go to school, Mike?"

"UCLA." He's glad she picked this topic, he thinks. The only safe one he can think of, because it's the only thing he has any real details on. No amusing stories, anecdotes, from this life yet. No family to discuss, and he suspects she already knows more about the few friends he has than he does. _You were right, this was too damn early. But Lisa might be worth making a go of it._

"PAC-10. Serious conference," she says. "Did you play anything?"

"Just intramural hockey." _Fuck. Michael Vaughn played intramural hockey. Michael Henderson played nothing. Michael Henderson has nothing to talk about. _He glances at Peter, suddenly tense. 

Someone's cell phone rings — Lisa's, he realizes after a moment — and saves him. "I'm really sorry," she says, blushing again and fumbling through her purse. Phone to her ear and "hello," she stands and walks a few feet away from the table.

"Relax, Mike," Peter says, when she's out of earshot. "Little slip. You're going to have those. Lisa's not going to run a background check on your intramural sports career." He grins, then turns curious. "So, what do you think? You going to ask her out?"

He doesn't hesitate, needs no time to think about it. "Yeah. I think so."

"I knew it. Did I not tell you, Helen?"

Helen looks amused. "Yes, Peter, you did."

———

He waits until lunch is over, asks Lisa on the way out if she would like to see a movie sometime. Safer, that way, he thinks. Dinner means more stilted conversation and longing for background he doesn't have anymore.

"I'd like that," she says. "Or, actually, what about a game? I haven't had much of a chance to see my team this season, but I was going to go Friday night."

The structure, thus far, falls apart on Friday night, when he does the requisite exercises for his shoulder and then sits on the couch. Book in his hand and game of some sort on the television, and not much else.

"Friday night would be great."

———

The problem with basketball games versus movies, he decides, is that silence isn't expected here. The arena is small, not even half-full, and they sit on wooden roll-out bleachers three rows from the floor. She looks good, relaxed, like she's comfortable here, he thinks. Jeans that fit just right, Nikes and a long sleeve t-shirt. Her hair hangs loose and wavy around her face, perhaps prepared for his benefit, because it doesn't quite match the rest of her image. 

He likes her, he decides. _Smart. Attractive. Fun. Common interests. If only you'd met her in L.A. If only she was from your old life._ _If only you could be your real self instead of some persona from a packet._

Because like isn't enough once she's detailed the team's prospects for the season — poor — and she's complained about a foul and they've talked — gingerly, on his part — about the differences between the women's and men's game in college ball.

"So, tell me about yourself," she says, still half-focused on the game. This is appropriate, now, because Peter kept the conversation square on her during lunch. Probably good, he thinks, since he knows even less about marketing insurance than he does selling insurance. But it means she'll try to even things out, now.

"There's not a whole lot to tell." _Not a lot to tell because you're not supposed to be interesting, not supposed to be memorable._ "I've been at Baxter for a little while, same thing with Bloomington."

"Oh," she says. "I was born and raised here. I like the city."

Yeah, Lisa, it's nice, but it's no Los Angeles. "I was born in Chicago."

"I love Chicago," she says. "It's so, I don't know — alive."

Never been there, myself. Maybe it's time to go, if only to help out the cover story. "I actually wasn't there very long. We moved around a lot when I was a kid."

"Oh." _Don't ask about the parents. Please don't ask about the parents._ "So, your family, where do they live now?"

"I — actually, I was an only child, and my parents died in a plane crash when I was 17." Of all the lies he's told so far, this one pulls at him the most. Maybe because it feels too fabricated to be real, and he knows what real is. Maybe because of the mother who's still alive and thinks he isn't.

"Oh." She turns to face him. "I'm sorry. I didn't think to — "

"Don't worry. There wasn't any way for you to have known. It was a long time ago." _A long time ago that never happened. And a good way to get the focus the hell away from you._ "Why don't you tell me about your family?" 

"Well, we're pretty normal, compared to — " He nods, and thinks that if the cover story did this to fairly self-assured Lisa, he might well be doomed. " — I mean, well, there's my mom and dad. Three brothers, all older. They're how I learned to play. We used to have some pretty mean games in the driveway."

"I can imagine," he says. "So did you look at other schools, for college, or did you want to stay local?"

"I had a couple other offers, but yeah, I guess I wanted to stay close to home if I could. What about you? Were you living in California when you applied for schools?"

Back to him, again, and this feels much less like a date than an exam. _ Time to break out your number two pencil and figure out just how much of that packet you really know._ "Yeah. Plus I liked the school. And the city."

"I've never been to Los Angeles," she says.

"It's a great city, if you know where to go." _As are Rome, and Paris, and New Delhi. London, Dublin, Berlin, Moscow, Amsterdam. And I can't ever tell you that I've been to them. Or why._

———

He drives her back to her apartment, walks her to her door and waits for her to make the next move, to see if she thinks this went as badly as he did. But she just stands there, pretty blond poker smile on her face, and he's not sure what she wants or what he wants.

He could tell her he had a great time tonight, tell himself he wants a future with her. But he's tired of lying. _This is how Sydney must have felt, this false life, all the time. _

Lisa puts her hand on the doorknob. _Fuck it. You have to keep trying. _ He leans in and kisses her, softly, and she responds, but it's nothing special. Nothing to suggest there's going to be anything more.

She doesn't invite him in, and he wouldn't have said yes, anyway. He tells her good night and walks away. 

If only you didn't have Sydney Bristow to compare her against.

Because maybe, he thinks, it has more to do with Sydney than the lies. He could have tried harder, asked her for another date, thought of more interesting lies. Hometown Lisa, pretty but normal, who, he suspects, couldn't even fathom flying to his favorite cities and doing the things Sydney Bristow did regularly. 

It might have even worked, until he added too many items to the list of things not-Sydney about her, and it overwhelmed him. If he'd wanted it bad enough, he thinks, he would have found a way.

You're not ready because you're never going to be ready.

———

He returns to his apartment and starts his computer. His first contact report is required now, according to his packet. A lengthy email to his Aunt Margaret — one of the few relatives he has left, apparently, describing Lisa Tucker and his date with her in detail. 

He concludes the email by telling Aunt Margaret that Lisa is a great woman, but he just doesn't think she's right for him.

Aunt Margaret, he knows, will still run a background check on her, just in case.


	7. The Curse of Sydney

Chapter 6 — The Curse of Sydney

Two months and three days in — a fifth of the way to Peter's year — and Vaughn is celebrating. Not the milestone, or that it came faster than he had expected. Celebration today is for a win at Peter's gym, "good game" to everyone courtside, and the feeling of pushing his muscles again. They'll ache, later, but from hard use instead of trauma, a welcome change.

This is his second Saturday game with Peter's friends, and he isn't breathing quite as hard this time, which is progress, he thinks. He's evened out the group — six of them, now, all friendly thus far, and Peter was right, he thinks. _ They are good guys._

Vaughn picks up his duffel bag and water bottle, and heads for the locker room.

"Hey Mike," one of them — Dan — calls out. "You going to the bar tonight?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

"Good. See you there."

This will be part of the structure soon, he thinks. New friends, these Saturday games, their bar and his soon-to-be-broken-in skates. No women and no dates since Lisa, but everything else is enough to make him forget the gaping holes for long stretches of time.

Enough to make him think that Michael Henderson's life could come far closer to normal than Michael Vaughn's.

———

Kelly's is a short, squatty place three blocks from Vaughn's apartment that garners more traffic than it can handle on Saturday nights. Owner Jim Kelly is in his 60s, and still works the taps whenever the place is short-staffed. The pizza is deep dish, sugar in the crust. Wooden booths and whatever's on tap — and there's quite a bit — scrawled all over the chalkboard behind the bar.

Vaughn learned all of this during his first trip here. This is his fourth, and he's decided he likes the place, save for the cigarette smoke — allowed and acceptable, it seems, in Illinois. He walks there quickly, past the Christmas lights and wreaths on his neighbors' doors, the sled marks in the snow covering their lawns.

It has snowed several times since he's been here — the first time most shocking, to glance out his window and see nothing but white. It melted, to barren trees and evergreens, just as jarring after years in Los Angeles. Enough time, he thinks, and he will adjust to that as well. _Maybe you're adjusting too fast. Maybe it shouldn't be this easy to settle in._

He still hasn't figured out how to handle the cold, and he's glad to turn the corner, into the parking lot. He bought a new winter coat a few weeks ago, but it never seems to be quite enough for the December chill. He is at the door when he hears Peter calling his name.

"Hey, Mike! Wait up."

He does, despite the cold, and yanks open the heavy wooden door. Inside, and glad it's dark and warm, when Peter finally catches up.

"Nobody's here yet," Vaughn comments.

"Larry called me, said his wife wanted him to stay in tonight, so he may not make it," Peter says. "I don't know about everybody else. Probably just late, as usual."

He follows Peter to the bar, decides to try a local porter and says he'll pick up the first pizza. A quick quest for a desirable table, then, one close to a television and big enough for the entire group. They find one, on a side wall, a long, old wooden booth carved up with years of eating and love 4EVR. The beer is decent, he decides, smooth and probably worth consideration for a second pint.

"So," Peter says, clunking his own beer back on the table. "I have a question for you. And you don't have to answer. But, you know, I see you here, and then the whole thing with Lisa, and I have to ask — did you leave someone behind?"

"What?"

"A girl. Was there a girl? Someone you had to leave?"

"Sort of." Vaughn pauses. "It was complicated."

"I gathered. That was a yes or no question."

He's told no one the whole story, not even Weiss, but he feels compelled to tell Peter. _But not here._ "This probably isn't the best place to discuss it."

"It is now." Peter reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a different imitation-Cross pen and activates it. "She was your agent, wasn't she? The one you said you lost?"

Vaughn nods, stares down into his beer. Almost half-empty, already, and most of the foam is gone.

"I had a feeling there was more story behind that," Peter says. "But what was the deal with that? You knew she was in the protection program. So did she get pulled before you?"

"A little more than a year before me. I was with her when they drove her to the airport."

"And?"

"She asked me to go with her. Into hiding. We hadn't had that type of relationship, although I think we both wanted it. We followed the rules." He pauses, takes another sip. "I considered it, really seriously considered it, but at the time I thought it was just too big a leap. So I told her no."

"And then a year later you end up getting shot and placed in the program and regretting it."

"I regretted it long before that."

"I'm sure you've already realized this, Mike, but you're not ever going to see her again. You've got to start thinking about moving on."

"I've been trying to move on." _In this life and the old one. And you haven't been very good at it, either way. It was a mistake, and you might well be alone for the rest of your life because of it. Call it the Curse of Sydney._ "It's just, after knowing her — she's not an easy person to get past."

"I understand." Peter twists the thin silver pen around in his hands, watches it gleam in the dim light.

And maybe this is it. "You left someone."

"My girlfriend." He looks back up, uncharacteristically serious. "We were together, somewhere around a half a year, but I used to think, 'maybe she's the one,' you know? I made it out. She didn't. They killed her because she happened to be in my apartment. The Agency didn't have time to warn her. I found out on my way to the airport." Peter's voice wavers. "She didn't have anything to do with anything. She was just a civilian."

The pen beeps.

"I'm sorry."

"It's in the past. I try not to think about it, try to move on. I know it's rough. But it's the only way. You can't live as who you used to be."

They sit, silently, half-focused on football highlights running across the television screen. Vaughn dully offers to refill their beers when they finish, and check on the status of their pizza.

It is ready, and there are two more men at the table when he returns, pizza and two beers balanced precariously in his arms.

"Jumping right into the heavy lifting, aren't you, Mike?" Dan asks.

"Yeah." He laughs, hollow, places everything on the table, and sits next to Peter. But suddenly, he thinks, the food and the place and the night just don't feel as normal. _And deep down, you and Peter aren't ever going to be normal. No matter how much he jokes and you try._ Peter is oddly quiet, subdued, next to him, and they let Dan and Jason chatter about some "killer catch" this afternoon. 

Vaughn scans the bar, the stream of people entering now, and this is when he sees her. Not _her_. Not Sydney. But close enough for his imagination. Her back, only, walking up to the bar in the middle of a big group, six or seven people. Hair dark and short, close to what he saw last on her. Gait confident, and oh so familiar. He's seen her before. At the grocery store, the mall. Once jogging down his street. But he saw her back in L.A., too. Always only a glimpse. Always just his imagination.

"I see you looking at her," Peter says, voice low. "You going to go talk to her?"

You'll try and you'll try and you'll try and it will never work, but what happens when you stop trying? "Yes."

He stands, starts across the room. She's standing in line, three deep now, at the bar, short black wool coat, jeans and boots, bar chic around here in December. He walks up behind her, suddenly tense, and too quiet when he finally speaks.

"Excuse me. Can I buy you a drink?"

She says nothing, doesn't acknowledge him. _She can't fucking hear you. Speak up._

He places his hand on her shoulder. Gentle, careful, but enough that she'll feel it. "Excuse me — "

She spins quickly, looks straight at him. _Similar. Too similar._

Holy fucking shit.

It is her.

———

Her eyes grow wide and surprised, but only briefly, and he thinks there is recognition. But she brushes past him, walking fast, toward the exit.

He follows._ This is not even believable. This can't be real. But that was her. It really was her. Somehow. And you are not going to lose her now. _

She is nowhere in sight when he pushes through the door, a burst of cold on his face. He searches, head snapping back and forth, left to right, but she is gone. _No. No. No. This can't happen. It can't go this way. That was her and you were so close. Hand on her shoulder. So damn close._

He starts through the rows of parked cars. Perhaps one is hers, and she is sitting there, about to start it up. _But why? To drive away? She knew it was you. She saw you. Maybe she doesn't want to see you. Maybe she never wants to see you again._

He is flat on his back before he can think anymore, her cry cutting through the air. Familiar from so many missions — a shriek through the comm link. His spine hits the pavement hard, old pain cutting through his shoulder, and for a moment he can't breathe.

She can, like it was effortless, and she straddles him. One hand clenched around his belt and twisting, a motion too well-practiced not to be habit.

"You got the eyes all wrong. Who are you? Who sent you here?" Her other hand comes up, pulls at his face, looking for a mask.

"It's me, Sydney. It's me," he chokes out.

Maybe it is his voice. Maybe she's realized there is no mask. Her eyes are still big, beautiful brown. But maybe she thinks about colored contacts.

Stunning realization on her face, now, and she releases the hand on his belt. Pulls it away from his body, palm flat, fingers shaking. The hand pulling at his face shifts, presses light against his cheek, and she stares down at him, mouth open slightly, tears in her eyes.

"It can't be you," she whispers, and he wants nothing more than to sit up and wrap his arms around her and tell her it most certainly can, although he's got no clue as to how or why. But her parking lot martial arts have drawn attention, he knows. He can hear the crowd beginning to gather, and they cannot do that. Not here.

"Shit, lady." She slides off of him, and he stands stiffly. "I just followed you out because you left your cell phone sitting on the bar." He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his own phone and hands it to her. "Make sure you get your self-defense instructor something nice for Christmas."

A nice show of brushing himself off, to the amusement of the onlookers. They disperse, some to the bar, some to their cars, as he walks away, towards his apartment. He wants to sprint, run as fast as he can. Yank open the trick-lock door, pick up the phone and pound in the number. But he forces himself to keep his pace normal, inconspicuous.

The shock and adrenaline wear off after a block, and he realizes his coat is still draped over the back of the booth. The cold starts to seep through his sweater, but he won't turn back.

Can't turn back. Can't wait any longer. It's her. Somehow, it's her.


	8. Resolution

Chapter 7 — Resolution

She answers on the first ring. One word. "Where?"

"36 Willow Drive. Apartment 207. You need directions?"

"No." She hangs up. 

He glances around his apartment, not sure how long he has. If she drives, maybe a minute. Five if she walks. The place is clean, anyway. Not as sparse as when he moved in, but still no clutter, no personality.

He walks to the bathroom, removes the contacts. Still cold from the walk here, he turns the thermostat up five degrees on his way back to the living room, then sits on the couch and stares out the window. Well over a minute by now, he thinks, and maybe she isn't coming. _Maybe she's decided she doesn't want to have anything to do with you. Maybe you imagined the whole damn thing._

But it was real, he knows. Her body on his. Her startled eyes. Her voice on the phone — a desperation there he recognized.

And there, now, Sydney, walking along the sidewalk. He stands when he sees her, walks over to the door as she pounds up the stairs. He's there by the time she knocks, but he waits for a moment, heart racing, hand on the knob. Resolution, he thinks, is finally here.

Deep breath, door open, and Sydney standing there with a big, bright smile. After all the time and the way they left things, he doesn't know what to say, so he stands, motionless, not sure what to make of the happiness on her face.

She is more decisive, stepping inside and wrapping her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. Easy to respond, now that she's taken the first step, and pull her closer. He revels in it, in her closeness. _Holding her now, and you thought you let her go forever. But this won't last. There's too much, so much —_

Sydney stirs, turns her head towards his. "You came," she whispers. So simple, so wrong, and he has to release her, step away.

"I — no." He reaches behind her to close the door and turn the deadbolt. "I didn't."

"I don't understand," she says. "I thought you came to get me, to take me home. Pulling me out of the bar, this safehouse — Vaughn, please don't tell me I have to go hide somewhere else. I'm settled in now, and I can't do it again."

His last name should sound foreign; he hasn't heard it in two months. But somehow it seems natural out of her mouth. Natural and dangerous. He starts toward the living room, and she follows. "This isn't a safehouse. This is my apartment."

"I don't understand."

"Have a seat." She claims the right side of the couch, unbuttons her coat and shrugs out of it, draping it over the arm. _Way to be hospitable. But what the hell is hospitable in this situation, anyway?_ Vaughn sits on the other end of the couch, next to the end table and the phone. He picks the latter up, slides the plastic strip from the bottom. Red light.

He turns to face her. "That's how SD-6 found you out."

"What?"

"Your bugkiller. It failed. They overheard you talking to Will about the CIA, and they stepped up scrutiny of your actions. Sloane had Marshall hack the video surveillance on your last mission. He saw you make the switch for us."

"Damn it. Of all the things — " sudden panic on her face " — wait. You said they heard me talking to Will. Is he okay? Is he safe?"

"He's fine. At least he was when I left. The CIA had a team on his place for two months, just to be sure. But he was really too high-profile a target after the story he published."

"What about my father?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Vaughn, what happened to you?"

It's been so long since he's seen her face, he thinks, he should want to see it no matter what. But he has to look away, stare at his hands, as he begins.

"The short answer is I really don't know what happened to me." He glances up; she's becoming frustrated. "But you don't want the short answer. After SD-6 tagged you as a mole, your father was under suspicion for a long time. When they cleared him, he laid low for a while, but it was pretty obvious he wanted to resume the operation. He wanted to bring you home. So he recruited Dixon."

"After all the times you said I shouldn't?"

"We realized we needed a double on ops, after we — after we lost you. It was still risky, but it paid off. They assigned me as his handler."

"So what happened?"

"I don't know whether SD-6 had identified me back when I was your handler, or somehow they traced me through Dixon. But they shot me." This startles her, eyes widening for a moment. "I woke up two weeks later in a room at St. Joseph."

"So you don't know what happened to Dixon, his family — " 

"No. But I think the CIA must have had some sort of heads-up, so they might have gotten to them. I was shot on the front step of my apartment building, and somebody got there in time to give me medical attention and get me into hiding."

"So you're in the protection program, too." She is still skeptical, he thinks. _Still wants to believe you're here to whisk her back off to Los Angeles. I tried, Sydney. I wanted to. So bad, I wanted to._

"Yeah. Just over two months now."

"Why here?" She asks. "Why Bloomington?"

"I think they cluster people in cities that have the right characteristics. A guy I work with, he's in the program too."

"The same city, I could almost write off as a coincidence." She pauses. "But Vaughn, I live two blocks away."

And you were ready to chalk it up to fate. The real explanation comes suddenly in his mind, but it's perfect and it's clear. "Your father," he says. "I think if he couldn't see you again — "

" — he wanted to give me whatever he could. So he made sure you came here." 

Awfully presumptuous of Jack Bristow to give him as a gift, Vaughn thinks. Awfully hazardous to assume that she would want him. But then, he thinks, Jack Bristow didn't know what happened in the truck. He's not sure how to acknowledge her statement, so he says nothing.

"I feel so disconnected," she says. "Like all these things are still happening in my old life, and everyone there thinks — they all think I'm dead, don't they?"

"Yes. Although I think Will suspected something." And Dixon, he doesn't add.

A sad smile. "That sounds about right. But at least you're here now."

"Yeah." Silence, and it scares him. "Would you like something to drink?"

"Sure."

"What would you like? Coffee? Wine? Water?"

"Wine would be great." His images of her, his memories, he realizes, pale in comparison to the real thing. Never this beautiful, never this real, in his mind. She was fading, so gradually he hadn't realized it, and now that she's here, he wants to run his fingers across her face, analyze every angle. 

Instead, he walks to the kitchen and opens the Bordeaux he bought under the auspices of someday having company. Pours himself a glass, to be polite, although he's not sure how well it will mix with the beer. 

"I've got the same wine glasses," she comments, when he hands one to her.

"I bought them last month."

"I hated that, having to buy all new stuff. I like to shop, but after a while it just feels boring and pointless, like you're restocking your life." She takes a sip. "This is really good."

It strikes him, hard and direct, that he's sitting in his own apartment enjoying a glass of wine with Sydney Bristow. _Far beyond something that would have happened in your old life. But she's not Sydney Bristow anymore._

"So what's happening in your life? What are you doing now?" Vaughn asks.

"I work in the library at Illinois State, over in Normal. Special Collections. It moves from boring to fascinating on a daily basis, but it's mostly been good. And the people are wonderful. That's who I was with, at Kelly's." She pauses. "I'm taking classes, too. I don't know if you knew this or not, but I was pretty close to getting my doctorate at UCLA." 

One more course and a dissertation and then Dr. Bristow. Of course I knew, Sydney.

"They said in my packet that you can't fake a doctorate," she continues. "The research, the dissertation, all the contacts. It would have been too dangerous. So I had to start over, and I can only go for a master's. But I'll still be able to teach, so I guess it's better than nothing. And it's not like SD-6 would have let me teach, anyway. What about you?"

"I work at Baxter Insurance — " She finds this highly amusing. " — which is a front company for the Agency."

"So you still work for the CIA?"

"Yes. A lot of low-level analysis and cybersnooping on bulletin boards. And we maintain a safehouse, although no one's stayed there since I started."

"You and this other agent in the protection program?"

"Yeah. Peter. He's a great guy, sort of showed me the ropes when I first started out."

She is quiet for a moment. "I wish I would have had someone like that. Someone who knows you're lying to everyone else, knows the life. Someone who knows who you used to be."

"I know exactly who you used to be." Which isn't true, he thinks, but close enough. He knew the important things, if not the details. _And you could have learned them all. You could have been there for her, and you passed it all up._

"Yes, you do." She delivers it dry, but he's sure he knows what she's thinking. _The same thing you're thinking. _

_You're going to have to broach it sometime._ "I'm sorry, Syd. I could have been that person for you."

She leans back against the couch cushion, eyes hardening. "You don't have to apologize. I shouldn't have asked. I thought we had something we obviously didn't have."

Raw hurt, there on her face, and it hits him just as hard as her words. _ She's never fully healed. And she needs resolution just as much as you do. Maybe more._

"It wasn't wrong to ask, Syd."

"No. Don't tell me that. There's only one way it would have been right, and that's if you would have said yes. So don't. I don't need to hear this tonight. Let's just — "

"I should have said yes. That's why it wasn't wrong to ask."

"It's easy to say that now, when you can look back and see you were going to end up here, anyway. Hindsight is 20-20, Vaughn."

"I believed it before I was shot, Syd. I think some part of me knew it as soon as I said no."

This is enough to break her. "Then why did you say no? Why didn't you come with me? Why did you make me do this alone?" She blinks furiously, then let the tears go, rolling down her face.

"Because I was afraid." There. He's said it.

He's not sure what she expected, but it's clear this isn't it. "Why were you afraid?" Barely a whisper.

"I was afraid to risk everything and find out it was nothing." He pauses, forces himself to stay focused on her eyes. "I wanted the chance. I wanted to be part of your life — you don't know how much I wanted that. But that's a big leap to make, and I was afraid you were asking because I was the only one left you could ask. I was afraid you would decide a couple months in that you didn't really love me, or that maybe you never did."

"How could you possibly think that?"

"I don't know, Sydney. I don't know if it was love, if you can love someone...the type of relationship we had. I don't know how you get love from that. How you translate that into love."

She makes a half-hearted swipe at her wet cheeks. "How do you know it wasn't already love, Vaughn?"

"Do you think it was?"

"I don't know." She pauses. "But I do know you were the only person I would have wanted to come with me."

"Why?"

Her look says the answer should be obvious. But nothing about any of this has ever been obvious to him. _Always a struggle, Sydney Bristow._ "Because you know exactly who I used to be," she says softly.

It isn't that simple. "You and I both know that's not true."

"It's true where it counts." She swirls the last of her wine around in the glass. "Vaughn, what made you change your mind?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said you should have said yes. What made you change your mind?"

"You wanted me to take a risk, and it took me a long time to figure this out, but I realized that even if things wouldn't have worked out, being with you — that was worth taking the risk." _No going back now._ "Sydney, I've spent most of the last year trying to convince myself I didn't make the biggest mistake of my life. And I really think I did."

He's not really sure what to tell her beyond that. But maybe, just maybe, he thinks, watching as she slips back onto the verge of tears, it was all he needed to say. 

There's still the question of what you need to do. Not so easily answered, but he thinks he knows. 

It doesn't take long for the new tears to spill over. She brings a hand up to brush at them, but he leans forward and catches it in his. Squeezes it gently, and when there is no protest, moves closer. Her breath comes short and uneven as he places it back in her lap. He moves his hand slowly toward her face, fingers outstretched and trembling, like he's trying to woo a wild animal. Still not sure if she'll bolt. 

But she stays there, leaning into his touch, his fingertips caressing her jaw, thumb sliding over wet cheeks, soft lips. He leans closer, and surely she knows what he wants to do. But she doesn't make it easy on him, doesn't close her eyes. Open instead, big and brown and wet, staring into his. Waiting.

Worth the risk.

He steels himself, moves in to brush her lips with his. And finally, a response. Finally, her eyes closed and her head tilted and her lips moving against his, mouth dry and oaky from the wine. He keeps it short, simple, sweet, then pulls back to gauge her reaction.

It isn't what he expected. She looks flustered, frightened. He leans back, _ give her some space, damn it_. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have — "

"No. It's just..." She waves a hand between them.

"You're seeing someone."

"No. I'm — this is too much, right now. I just — I need some time." She reaches back and sets her empty wine glass on the end table, then stands quickly, other hand wrapped around her coat and yanking it with her. Halfway to the door before he can even think to speak.

"Sydney, wait." He rises.

"I can't." A whisper, and then she is gone.

He stands in the middle of his living room, the feel of her lips still fresh on his, and realizes he doesn't even know her name.


	9. Now or Then

AN: Due to ff.net policies regarding NC-17 fic, the full chapter cannot be posted here. If NC-17 isn't your thing, or you aren't of age, the version of this chapter here at ff.net is rated R (NC-17 portions have been cut).

The real chapter, rated NC-17, is located at my site: http://www.geocities.com/laras_dice/wpp/wpp_08.html

Please, if you are archiving this fic, take the NC-17 version.

Chapter 8 — Now or Then

He returns to the couch and sits. Hopes for her return, to at least tell him where she lives, tell him her name. Tell him there's too much hurt for anything other than friends, but that, at least, would be something.

But he tracks the time on his watch — 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour — and decides that isn't going to happen. _Not tonight. Maybe not ever._

Resolution, he thinks, doesn't feel like he thought it would. It aches and it stings and it's real, and now that he has it, he hates it. _Too late. Too much hurt and too much damage done to salvage it._

It is snowing again, he notices. Big glittery snow globe flakes coming down, and they should be beautiful, but they only remind him of where he is, of what he's lost and given up. _Fucking hindsight._ He reaches out, presses his hand against the cold glass, watches the snowflakes grow blurry and thinks he's got no idea where to go from here. Knows he is not going to bounce back from this, that moving on will be harder than ever, with her two blocks away and completely distant. _Just exist. Just go to work and do the routine, and stay alive, and maybe that will be enough. And maybe some day you'll pass her on the street, and you'll tell her hello and she'll smile a little, and you can go from there. Start again._

A faint knock at the door, and he stands, wants to believe it's her, but it has been almost an hour now. _Don't go getting your hopes up because your neighbor got your mail again._ Across the room quickly, heart pounding as he opens the door. 

Sydney, covered in snowflakes.

"Hi," she says, soft and shy and shivering. Nose red and eyelashes coated with tiny beads of water.

What the hell does this mean? "Do you want to come in?"

She nods, steps inside and waits for him to close the door behind her. There, wet and cold and right in front of him, when he turns around. Chilled fingertips on his cheeks as she pulls his mouth to hers and kisses him, hard and thorough. Something has changed in her eyes, he thinks, when they finally break apart.

"It's time to get this right, Vaughn."

"What do you m— " She kisses him again, shivering under her bravado. _It means you got a second chance. Don't fuck it up. Don't ever fuck it up._ _ Ever ever ever. _He reaches between them to unbutton her half-soaked coat. "You're freezing cold."

"I took a walk," she says. "I needed to think. Apparently that doesn't work as well here as it does in California. Or, I guess it works, but the side effects aren't so good."

"You're crazy." He cups her chin. "You're here."

"Yes." She leans into him, and he rubs the thin wool sweater over her arms, but he's not going to be enough. 

He wishes he had a fireplace — someplace perfect and romantic to warm her. "Why don't I go get you a blanket?"

He starts toward his bedroom, hadn't meant for her to follow, but she does, and when he notices, he picks up her cold hand. 

"I never got the grand tour," she says.

"We were a little preoccupied."

"Yes. Yes we were."

They walk into his bedroom and he pulls down the bedspread, lifts the blue fleece blanket beneath it and drapes it over her shoulders. "Is that better?"

"A little bit." She draws it tighter and sits on the edge of the bed.

Nothing to do but join her, and he does, wrapping his arm around her, hand resting on her arm. "Do you want to talk, anymore, about — anything?"

"No." She leans into him, lays her head down on his shoulder. "I'm tired of hashing out the past. Who should have asked and who should have said yes. I don't know what love is, Vaughn, and I'm tired of guessing. I just know I want to be with you. And I think — I think you feel the same way."

"Yes." He slides his hand up, runs his fingers through the wet strings of her hair. "Of course." _Always. And now it's out there, and everybody's said it and she's still here._ It occurs to him that this might be a perfect moment, that it may not get any better than this, Sydney leaning against him and peace between them. He stays silent, doesn't want to break it. She does the same, and maybe she's thinking the same thing.

"I missed you," she whispers, finally.

"Me too." _So much it hurt. So much it made me half-crazy. No need to think about that now. She's here._

"Vaughn, what's your name, now?"

"Michael Henderson." He slides his hand over to her back, rubs in slow, steady circles.

"They kept your first name?"

"I'm told it's very common. What about you?"

"Catherine Murray. Or Cate, with a 'C'." She lifts her head and turns to face him. "But don't call me that tonight."

He's just beginning to process what _that's_ supposed to mean when she sits up and kisses him again. Slow, almost sloppy, overfocused on first his top and then bottom lip until he's groaning into her mouth and he knows exactly what that's supposed to mean. She stops but doesn't pull away, breath on his face and eyelashes fluttering _so close_.

He's wanted this so much for so long it's scary as hell. "Are you sure? I mean, I want — but it's really fast."

"You and I don't measure time the same way, Vaughn," she whispers. It makes his skin tingle. It's all the reassurance he needs. They won't talk about love anymore tonight, he thinks, but there must be some of that here. More need; he needs her and she needs him and they both need to forget the last fucked-up year and a half. Need to be certain this is all real.

———

*

*

*

———

She sighs, and sounds sated, as he traces her back idly with his index finger. "So where do we go from here, Vaughn?"

"Where we should have gone in the first place."

"That's a thoroughly useless answer."

He tries again. "Wherever we want to go." _Wherever you want to go._

"I don't want to go anywhere," she says, voice soft. Close to sleep, perhaps.

"Me either."

Her breathing goes shallow and that's it, he thinks, reaching over to stroke her hair and touch her cheek. Soon, he knows — from sleep not nearly as intimate as this — will come the words, endearing and amusing. For now, he watches her, and she is peaceful, so serene and so close the feeling enters him and he drifts into sleep with his hand resting on her hair and a faint smile on his face.


	10. Silence

**

**

Chapter 9 — Silence

She is still there, warm and soft and curled up beside him, when he wakes. Confusing, for a moment, until his mind rushes through the previous day and he forces himself to believe that it really did happen. _Twenty-four hours ago, you still thought you'd never see her again, much less...all of this. Sydney, Sydney, Sydney, how did we ever get here so fast? _

Not Sydney. Catherine, he corrects himself. Catherine, or Cate, from here on out, because Sydney is a bad habit, one he'll have to break, and fast. Catherine, he thinks, sounds like some olden-day literary heroine in a fancy dress. There is a Catherine in _Gatsby_, he recalls, a bit part, but none prominent in any of his books thus far. Sydney, he thinks, is a name for a more modern heroine, the spy in the black catsuit with the martial arts and brains. _So much more accurate, but you'll just have to get used to it. And Sydney could always play the role of Catherine, or anyone else she wanted to._

He remembers waking in the middle of the night, feeling her there. Feeling reassured. Feeling his resolution. He'd noticed the goose bumps on her arm and felt a little cold himself. The blanket in a pile on the floor beside him, and he'd picked it up, careful not to stir her, and pulled it over both of them.

It is still there, not quite enough for the cold morning, and she moves beneath it, mumbles something unintelligible and opens her eyes.

"Hi," she says, soft and sweet.

"Hey, Catherine." He's put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, and she cringes. "Let me try it again. Catherine." _Better. Much better._ But she still doesn't seem to approve. "Still wrong?"

"No. That was fine, Vau—Michael. It was just nice to be Sydney again."

"You're still Sydney," he says. "You're always Sydney."

"To you, anyway. Not to anyone else around here."

"But you're still the same person. Sydney is just a name."

"Easy for you to say, Mike." She shakes her head. "Michael. You got to keep yours."

"That doesn't seem to be helping you any."

She laughs, runs her fingers across his chest. "I'll get it eventually. It's just — you've always been Vaughn to me."

Which was all well and good back when you were Vaughn. When you were the handler with that special niche in her life. But what happens when you have to be Michael? When you're part of the mundane and the everyday and not the default confidant because you know all the secrets?

"Okay," she says. "This was supposed to be where you told me you would always be Vaughn." She smiles, in support of the joke, but she's worried.

"I'm not always going to be Vaughn. I'm not Vaughn now, S—Cate." _Best get that clear._ "You don't need Vaughn anymore. You don't need someone with that role in your life."

"I know that, Michael." She delivers it perfectly this time, but doesn't acknowledge that she's done it. "But I always wanted Vaughn to have a different role. I wanted you to be a bigger part of my life."

"But don't you worry?" _Aren't you tense as hell right now, and afraid we're going to stumble through this and it isn't going to work?_ "I don't know anything about you. I hardly knew you back — back then. And I don't know anything about your life right now."

"I don't see how you could possibly think that," she says. "You know more about me than anyone else in my life right now. You knew more about me than anyone else in my life back then. You said it yourself, V—Michael, that you knew exactly who I used to be. And you know that's the truth. The little stuff — it isn't important. We'll pick it up as we go along. This is just like starting any relationship."

It's not the same, Syd. It's completely different, because this isn't just any relationship, and the stakes are so high I won't even begin to know what to do if I screw this up.

"But don't you worry about that? Or didn't you, back then? I mean, what we had in common was something you didn't even want to be involved in."

"You don't know that," she says. "We could have lots of things in common."

"Or nothing."

"Well, we have history in common, even if there's nothing else. That counts for something. Something big, especially now." She sighs. "It's going to work, Michael. It has to."

She's in the same place. She's been where you've been, maybe worse, and she knows just how much is riding on this. He turns his head to kiss her cheek, and thinks at least they have fear in common.

———

She rolls away, eventually, and he gets a long view of her bare back before she commandeers a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from his dresser. He dresses in the same and follows her into the hallway.

She halts next to the door to the other bedroom. "What's in here?"

"Spare room." He opens the door. "Office and guest bedroom, mostly."

She walks straight toward the partially filled bookshelf, and it embarrasses him. "Are these yours, or did they buy them for you?" she asks.

"They're mine."

"Oh." She runs her index finger along the titles until she reaches the blue-and-white paperback and pulls it out. His new copy of _The Great Gatsby_. Old one dog-eared and likely discovered, with great amusement, by Weiss when they did whatever they did with the contents of his apartment. "This is one of my favorite books."

"Mine, too," he says. "You had a paper...do you remember how you did?"

He expects her to ask what paper, but instead she responds quietly, "I got an A." She slides the book back into the shelf. "I guess I didn't realize you were such an avid reader."

"I wasn't. I — after you left, they told me to go away for a little while, lay low. I had a lot of time on my hands, and I don't know, I guess I was just trying to connect with you, so I started buying books. I know that probably sounds absurd."

She shakes her head. "One evening last winter, I didn't have any work to do and I just sat down on the couch, channel surfing. I came across a hockey game, and I stopped and watched the whole thing. I don't even know why. At the time — at the time I was still pretty damn angry at you."

This hurts, and she knows it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up."

"No. That's how you were feeling, and it was my fault. Syd — " _Damn it._ " — Cate, if you want to talk about it, we should talk some more."

"Michael, you've said everything you needed to say." The anger is gone, he thinks. But there are tears in her eyes, and there's still hurt down there somewhere. He tells himself he's just going to have to make sure she never has a reason to dredge it up. _We didn't exactly get here on an ideal path. But maybe, somehow, all of this is going to work out._

———

He tells her to shower first, he'll fix breakfast; scrambled eggs, toast and whatever else he can rouse out of his refrigerator.

She showers quickly, pads into the kitchen in socks and her clothes from yesterday, wet hair hanging in her face. A little half-laugh at the eggs.

"Something wrong?" _Not that you're a real culinary genius, but they seem pretty normal, as scrambled eggs go._

"No, it's just — Will. I've never seen anyone not be able to scramble eggs, but he always found a way. He'd burn them, turn them funny colors — " She's laughing now, and he joins her. Knows Will Tippin well enough to imagine him, spatula poised and failing miserably. " — he was always a hazard in the kitchen, unless Francie was around to supervise."

She turns serious. "I can't tell you how great it is to be able to talk about them again. I think it's been a year since I've said their names."

"I know what you mean. I've got a couple million drunken Weiss stories going to waste right now."

"Tell them to me sometime."

"I will." _Today, even, if you want._ "Do you have to be anywhere today?" _Please say no._

"No. But I — this is finals week, and I've got a paper due Tuesday and two exams Wednesday, so I really should study."

"Oh." He stares at his plate for a moment. "I was just thinking, I owe you dinner. Maybe later in the week — "

"I think you owe me a lot of dinners," she smiles. "I can take a study break. I'm sorry. I procrastinated all of this work — I didn't anticipate anything like this, like us, happening."

"I don't see how you could have." _Probably better, anyway. We both need some time to process all of this. This has already been the most time you've ever spent alone with her. _"What time?"

"Seven o'clock okay?" He nods. He'll take the rest of the day to process, and he'll need it.

———

He lets her pick the restaurant, not familiar enough yet with much in the area beyond pizza and groceries. The roads have mostly been cleared of the snow, he's pleased to note. _Not a whole lot of winter driving under your belt. Maybe it's time to sell the big black boat and get an SUV._

"Left at the light," she says, and he glances over at her. Wearing makeup, now, lipstick and eyes smoked out with something dark. He still thinks she looks beautiful without anything, head on his shoulder in the morning. But there had been makeup, before that, before it was washed off by snow and tears, and so the stuff now is good, he decides.

She's bundled up in the wool coat again, but below that there's a low-cut red sweater, black skirt, tall black boots. Altogether more than enough to make him think _wow_ and finally manage something more coherent when she answered the door to her apartment. It made her blush, so he thinks it was sufficient.

The restaurant is small, homey, and not so far from the little Italian place back in Los Angeles. Table for two, candlelight, bottle of wine, and maybe they've got this in common as well, he thinks.

"It doesn't look like much," she says. "But the food's really good."

"It's great," he reassures. "Actually, it reminds me of this place in L.A. near my apartment. I wanted to take you there sometime — you know, if it was ever possible."

"I think everyone has a place like that in L.A. It's one of the reasons I miss it."

"Me too. I used to like to go down to — "

"Waitress," she whispers, just before their waitress — young, brunette, hair wisping out of her ponytail — approaches from behind him. She scribbles down their orders — chicken marsala for her, eggplant parmesan for him — in quick pencil shorthand, pours their wine, and hustles off.

Alone, again. Sydney pulls a tube of lipstick from her purse — _bugkiller_ — and twists it until it beeps. She sets it on the table. "So when were you in Rome?"

Which she wants to know because — oh. "I was assigned to Station Rome most of my first year after training. I didn't know Italian, at first, but I didn't really need to. I was officially a gofer for the ambassador there."

"And unofficially?"

"A middleman, mostly. I picked up dead drops, did a few brush passes, moved intel when it was important enough to hand-deliver. Odds and ends." _ And round about that time, you were well on your way to becoming a field operative for SD-6._

"Where did you go after that?"

"They had an opening in New Delhi. Same basic deal there for two years. Then Paris, which is where I think they wanted me to go in the first place — fluency in the language and all that. I worked a couple surveillance operations there, but they pulled me back to L.A. after six months." He pauses. "I worked a desk there for awhile — reports and analysis, mostly. And then they assigned me to you."

She smiles, sips her wine. "I miss it. You wouldn't think I would, but I do."

"Really?"

"Yeah," she says. "I used to think, if we ever took them down, I'd want to retire and get away from that life as fast as I possibly could. But, you know, it gets in you. I think now if it was safe and I could go back, I'd still want to work for the Agency."

"Don't get your hopes up. The odds of that are — "

"I know, I know," she says. "Next to impossible. I guess I miss the missions, the challenges. I think I realized that once I got here — that it was the lies that bothered me, not everything else."

"Because you had to come here and tell more lies?" She nods, and he takes a sip of wine, smiles at her. "So, Catherine, what have you been doing since you've been here?"

"School and work, mostly. It's not too exciting, especially since I've already done a lot of the coursework. But another semester and I'll be almost done."

"That's great." He'll be able to attend her graduation, he thinks. Walk up to her after it's over and tip her cap back, kiss her hard and tell her for the umpteenth time just how amazing she is.

"I try to get out when I don't have too much work. That's what I was doing yesterday." _Until fate or Jack Bristow intervened._ "I run a lot, too."

"I could tell."

She laughs. "I don't know what I'm going to do, with the snow now. I got a treadmill last winter, but it's not the same."

"Peter, the guy I work with, got me to join his gym. Mostly to play basketball there, but there's a track. Maybe you should come with me sometime, see if that works better."

"I think I will." 

They've been talking so fast and it has flowed so well — in his estimation — that the first silence is a surprise. And this, he thinks, is what he feared — that it would come and be scary and uncomfortable. _But it's not. It's her smiling in the candlelight, and history, and knowing, and just being here, with her._

He's spent years wanting this moment, this time, he realizes, and fearing it at the same time. Fearing that it would come, and it would be wrong, and then what would he be left with? _But somewhere deep down, you must have thought it could be perfect, or you wouldn't have wanted it in the first place._

And it is, he thinks, or it's damn close. _And maybe there's nothing to be afraid of._

———

He takes her home, hours later, after the conversation picks up and she scoffs at her schoolwork. Walks with her up to her apartment door, and the building, he notices, is just like his, although her place is on the first floor.

"Good night, Catherine." He slips an arm around her waist, fully intends to hold himself to one kiss, short and sweet. But she is greedy, hand around his neck, bringing him back when he starts to pull away. 

"Come inside with me," she whispers, breathless.

He wants to — so badly — but last night, he thinks, was too fast, even if it all worked out. "You've got work to do. I can wait." _I can wait a long time, when there's hope._

Her hands slip from his neck. "Will you come over tomorrow, or call me, just to — "

"Just to be sure this is really real?"

"Yeah." She smiles, lets one hand linger on his chest.

"Of course."

"Good night, then, Michael."

"Good night."

———

He returns to his apartment and starts his computer. Another lengthy email to Aunt Margaret.

This time, he tells her he thinks he's found the one.

———

Peter pounces as soon as he's through the door the next morning.

"As your gift to mankind, you really do need to share that pickup line," he says, leaning back as far as his chair will allow and peering around his computer monitor. "Your coat's on the couch, by the way."

Vaughn laughs, but says nothing.

"Seriously," Peter says. "I know we had that little pep talk and I said to move on, but holy shit, Mike. You move on like a bullet train. One night stand, or you think there's a future with mystery woman?"

God, I hope so. "It wasn't any woman. It was _the_ woman."

"_The_ woman? As in your agent _the_ woman?" Vaughn nods. "How the hell is that possible?"

"I told you she's in the protection program, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, obviously they cluster agents, because we're both here."

"So this was like the greatest coincidence of all time?"

"I don't think so," Vaughn says. "Her father was CIA, too. I think he pulled some strings."

Peter shakes his head. "Man, do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

"I'm just beginning to figure it out."


	11. In Between

Chapter 10 — In Between

He calls her Monday night, and again Tuesday. Doesn't trust himself to keep from distracting her if he goes over to her apartment. They still talk for more than an hour, both times, before he forces himself to tell her good night. Bloomington, her job and his, literature, favorite movies, global politics, cars, and snow.

She calls late Wednesday night. "I'm done. Come over. Please."

He does, and she takes his hand as soon as the door is open, pulls him into a long, lingering kiss. 

"I can't believe you waited," she says.

"I can't believe I did either. But I wasn't going to be responsible for you flunking your exams." He smiles. "How did you do, by the way?"

"Pretty good, I think. It's a lot easier to focus on studying, now." She slips her arms around him and continues, voice lower. "Although not so much, this week. I kept thinking about you."

"I kept trying to convince myself not to show up on your doorstep."

"I wouldn't have minded if you did." She kisses him again, her hands slipping under his coat and then sweater, and things are moving too fast again, he thinks. There should be flowers, and more talking, and something closer to proper romance. _Then again, considering how you got here, maybe there's no proper way to do this. This isn't ever going to be an average relationship. That's what makes it different from all the other ones._

He slips his hands under her own sweater and thinks he can make it clear just how much he cares about her this way, too.

———

Aunt Margaret replies to his email, says she and Uncle Jack are happy for him. 

He thinks back, remembers nothing about an Uncle Jack from his packet, and hopes Sydney's version of Aunt Margaret sent her something similar.

———

She lets him slow things slightly over the next week. Smiles and blushes when he brings her flowers. Lets him take her out to dinner Thursday, to a movie Friday, to Kelly's on Saturday night. 

She introduces him to her friends there, a stream of seven names he's sure he won't be able to put to their friendly faces anytime soon. But he overhears one — Claire, he thinks — pull Sydney aside and tell her, "You waited long enough girl, but you sure picked a good one."

His friends tell him she seems great, with a few raised eyebrows. He thinks they don't even know the half of it, and glances at Peter, who gives him a knowing grin.

They linger, moving back and forth between the two groups, drinking good beer and eating greasy pizza, until it is closing time. Then they walk back to his apartment together, her gloved hand in his.

———

They wake late on Sunday morning, spend the afternoon at another movie. Chinese food in little cardboard cartons from the place next to Baxter for dinner. 

She looks across his little kitchen table when she's finished. "You've got roots." She points to the top of her own head, and he groans. "What?" she asks.

"I'm not very good at the whole hair dye thing." He laughs. "I made a huge mess of my bathroom the first time, and my hair didn't look much better. The second didn't take at all, and then the third pretty much fried everything."

She smiles. "Yeah, I noticed. Why don't you let me do it?"

"Really?" _That might actually make it bearable, if not enjoyable._

"Sure. I've got more experience." She stands, tosses her cartons into the trash can, and starts toward his bathroom. He follows.

"Do you have any old towels?" she asks, as he walks in.

"I don't have any old anything," he reminds her. "One or the other of those two on the rack should be nice and ruined already. Dye's in the medicine cabinet."

"Okay." He searches for the ruined towel himself as she opens the box and studies the directions. "You should take off your clothes, just in case. I wouldn't want to ruin anything."

It seems like a reasonable request — particularly given his first three attempts at this — until he looks at her and there's a little glint of ulterior motive in her eyes. He strips down to his boxers anyway. _Fine by me if this goes that way. More than fine._

By the time he's done, she's wearing latex gloves from the dye box on both hands. Holding a tube in one, rapidly turning tan. "You ready?"

"Yeah."

"The trick," she says, pouring half the contents of the tube on the top of his head, "is to get the dye in really fast, so it's even, and leave it in the exact time it says in the directions. And you should only use half of the bottle."

"I thought I did that." Although not the way she's doing it, he thinks. Not with her breasts pressed against his bare back and her breath on his neck. Not with her fingers working through his hair and making him tingle all the way to his toes.

"We'll see," she says, peeling off the gloves and placing them in the sink. "I'm done here. Now we've got to wait 20 minutes."

"What are we going to do for 20 — "

She places a soft, wet kiss on his shoulder, then another, and another, in a haphazard line.

Oh. "Catherine?"

"Hmm?" She slips her arms around him, locks her hands together over his chest, then returns to kissing his shoulder.

"As much as I don't want you to stop, if you keep it up, I think you're going to end up with dye all over your body."

She laughs, body shaking beside his. "I guess the whole point of this was not to make a mess. You see what all the normal people miss out on?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can't just ask anyone to dye your hair so the people from your old life who are trying to hunt you down and kill you might not recognize you."

"I always wondered about that. How I was supposed to explain why I dye my hair every couple weeks and wear colored contacts all the time to someone I was — intimate with."

"If you can even get that far. Or — did you?"

"Not — not in Bloomington."

"Me either." Her arms tighten around his chest as she rests her chin on his shoulder. "I went on a lot of bad first dates. A couple seconds and thirds. And it's not even that they were bad people," she says. "Not all of them, anyway. It's just that, you have a relationship here, and it's entirely based on lies. And I can't imagine getting seriously involved with someone who can't know anything about the first 30-some years of your life."

"I know what you mean."

"It's not like I didn't lie to the people I cared about back then. But at least some of my life was true. It wasn't all based on lies."

"Maybe when you've been here long enough, it won't be so bad," he says. "When you've got more background built up in this life."

"Maybe it doesn't matter, anymore," she murmurs, releasing her arms to check her watch. "It's almost time. It'll probably go better if you rinse in the shower."

"I think it would go even better if you got in and helped."

She smiles and starts on the buttons to her shirt.

———

The next week, on a Wednesday evening, she looks out his window at the snow covering the sidewalks and asks if the offer still stands to get her into his gym. 

Of course, he tells her, and he drives her there, uses one of his six complimentary passes to get her in. 

"Women's locker room is this way," he says. He takes her hand and they walk along the hallway beside the running track. There are rooms on the other side, most of them empty, for aerobics and yoga and countless other classes he's never had an urge to take. Several are filled with exercise equipment, however, and he catches her staring into one of these, eying two punching bags in the back.

"I'll spot you, if you want," he says.

"What?"

"On the bag. I'll spot you if you want to have a go at it."

She sighs. "No. This doesn't look like the type of place where a woman can just haul off and start attacking the bag without drawing attention. I'll run instead."

The same look on her face as the little Italian restaurant — _I miss it_ — but he doesn't call her on it. "I guess you're right," he says.

She disappears into the locker room, returns in shorts and a tank bra, and runs umpteen miles while he tests his shoulder on one of the machines by the bags.

———

He waits two days. It takes him a moment to remember why the alarm is blaring at three a.m., a little longer to reach over to the nightstand and turn it off. She sleeps through all of this, and he turns toward her, shakes her shoulder. "Catherine, wake up," although he wants to call her Sydney. It's more appropriate for his plans now.

"Hmm?" she mumbles, eyes half-open.

"Come on. Get up and get dressed. We have to go somewhere."

She squints her eyes at his alarm clock. "Michael, it's the middle of the night. Where could we possibly have to go?"

"It's a surprise."

"It better be a good one."

———

There is one car in the parking lot at the gym, but the lights are still blazing. Vaughn pulls in one space away, puts the car in park, and ignores her skeptical glance.

"This is the surprise?"

"Come on."

The lone car belongs to the attendant at the desk just inside the front doors. "The pool and the hot tub are closed now, guys," he says, waving them through.

"This place is open 24 hours a day," Vaughn says.

"Yeah, I figured that one out already. I'm still working on what we're doing here in the middle of the night."

"Hopefully not getting you utterly pissed off at me." He takes her hand, leads her along the hallway again, and stops outside the equipment room. "Go change," he says, handing her the duffel bag in his free hand.

She glances into the equipment room, to the bags in the back, and either she catches on to the plan here, or she's known it all along, and enjoyed watching him squirm. Either way, she smiles, "You didn't," and walks quickly to the women's locker room.

She returns a few minutes later in a tank bra, long pants and tennis shoes. "You didn't have to do this, you know," she says, as he tapes her hands and slips the gloves on.

"You seemed like you needed it."

She is tentative at first. A right hook he can barely feel, hands on the bag and braced for much more. She's capable of more, he knows, or at least she was. Left, right, right, right, left, increasing only slightly in force. 

"You hit like a librarian now." 

A hard right in response to that, and he feels it, then a sudden flurry of fists, feet. He watches her work into a rhythm, hitting fast and hard, hair swinging loose, sweat trickling down her forehead. She's right, he thinks. They couldn't have done this with people around. It is impressive, what she used to be, what she could still be, if given the opportunity, but it would have drawn attention they can't afford.

She finishes with that shriek and a roundhouse kick that sends him staggering backwards. Her laughter comes deep, from her stomach, and she's breathing hard as she walks over to him. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. Better than the bag, anyway."

"You still think I hit like a librarian?"

"Absolutely not."

"Good." She steps closer, pulls him into a sweaty hug. "Thank you. I did need that."

———

She wakes him at 3 a.m. a week later, and he obliges. Thinks it might become a tradition, for them, and he considers buying her a bag for Christmas. More convenient, that way, he thinks, but maybe half of the appeal is that slipping out of bed in the middle of the night and driving to the empty gym feels almost clandestine.

He needs the late night trips, he realizes, almost as much as her. They bring back fading memories: Sydney, in vinyl and leather, evening gowns and colored wigs, one of the best at what she did. Because sometimes, now, it feels natural to call her Catherine, or Cate. To ignore the past and walk with her to Kelly's and drink beer with all of the normal people.

Michael, as well, now comes natural off of her tongue, although he wonders what she would do if his new last name was something with one syllable. Something like what lingers there, low in her throat, and threatens to emerge every time he makes her come.

———

Their conversations shift to current jobs, current friends, current lives. 

They're restoring a series of works at the library, she says, and he's got a face for each of the names she mentions. Larry's wife is pregnant, he tells her, and she says she'll have to remember to tell him congratulations the next time she sees him. 

She's wavering between three possible paper topics, and she asks for his advice. He tells her Peter's latest joke: _"You know, what the Agency really needs to invest in is a good way to eliminate all these damn pop up ads from porn sites."_

She goes three days without mentioning Will or Francie. He goes a week without telling a drunken Weiss story. And that's okay, he tells himself, because they can't live in the past.

Then one night, "Vaughn" finally slips out, and he lies awake beside her after they've finished, wondering if he should say something.

Maybe he is both to her, he thinks. Michael and Vaughn. _The past leads to the present, and you can't ever extricate one from the other._

He reminds himself that she wants what he wants. Not this life, and not the old one, but somewhere in between.

———

Christmas Eve comes with a heavy snow that piles up on the sidewalks and seeps over the sides of his shoes as he walks to her apartment. Someone, probably Sydney herself, has swept the walk up to her door, but by then his socks are a lost cause, and he's glad she cleared out a dresser drawer for him. He did the same for her at his apartment, the same day they swapped keys. And soon, he thinks, it may be time to start talking about consolidating. Maybe they'll just finally pick one apartment, or maybe they'll search for a new place, one with a fireplace and plenty of space for the clutter they'll create.

He won't use the key tonight. She suggested the candlelight dinner, said they hadn't done anything nice in awhile, and so he brought flowers and wore a suit, and he'll knock on the door, do things properly. 

She answers in a low-cut black dress, a mass of candles flickering behind her. She's been crying.

"Hey," he says, stepping inside, free arm around her waist, instinctively. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head, looks away. "It's nothing."

"It's doesn't look like nothing." He steers her across her living room, to the couch, and flips the flowers onto an end table. "Did something happen?"

"Yeah. Christmas," she sniffles. "I'm sorry. I was just in the kitchen preparing and I started thinking about things back home — what everyone would be doing now. Just give me a minute, and I'll be okay." She gives him a big false smile.

Okay is relative, considering you just cried your eyes out. "What would you be doing, if you were back in L.A.?"

"Michael, dinner is — "

"Dinner is not going to be a whole lot of fun if you look like you're going to burst into tears the whole time. Talk to me, Sydney."

The use of her real name surprises her, and she looks up sharply. Surprises him, too, because he hadn't planned it. But here, now, it feels right, and he asks again. "What would you be doing?"

She wipes at her eyes and turns toward him. "Francie and I had this ratty old artificial tree — we got it for our dorm room junior year and we could never bring ourselves to replace it. And everyone was always busy — well, mostly me, you know... "

He nods. "Yeah."

"So we would wait until Christmas Eve to decorate it. A couple of years ago, she got this idea that we should do a traditional tree, string cranberries and popcorn and everything. So Will came over, and we popped like tons of popcorn on the stove, and drank all this eggnog, and we ended up eating all the popcorn. So we had a cranberry tree."

"A cranberry tree?"

"Yes, a cranberry tree. So now it's sort of become a tradition, except every year we pop more popcorn, you know, to see if we can actually save some for the tree."

"And do you?"

"No. Every year we'd still eat all the popcorn. That's why — that's why I was crying. I was in the kitchen, and I looked at the stove, and I thought, 'maybe there's enough popcorn now, with one less person around to eat it.'"

A little sob, and she wipes at her eyes again.

"I know what you mean," he says, pulling her closer. "It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when everyone you would have been celebrating with thinks you're dead."

"Yeah," she whispers. "I just — I miss them."

"I know. So do I."

"It was worse last year," she says. "So much worse — without you. I think I spent most of winter break crying. And don't say you're sorry, Michael. I just want you to know — I'm glad I'm not alone this year. I'm glad I'm with you."

"Me too." _So glad. So lucky._

"I think it's sort of harder, though, in some ways," she says.

"Why?"

"I feel torn, don't you? Last year, it was easy. I just wanted to go back, so badly, because everything in my life was back in Los Angeles. But now, I'm on my way to the job I've always wanted, and I've got new friends, and I've got you." She pulls back slightly and stares at him, eyes soft and wet. "If I could go back to my old life, the way it was, I don't think I would. And I guess I feel guilty about that."

"You shouldn't feel guilty about adjusting to your new life." _Even if I do, sometimes._

"It's more than just adjusting, Michael."

"I know."

"Would you do it? Would you go back to things the way they were before, if you could?"

The decision is easier for him, he thinks. He's had the advantage of seeing it three different ways. Life with Sydney Bristow, when he couldn't have her. Life without Sydney Bristow, regretting the chance he passed up. And his life now, with Catherine Murray. "No, I wouldn't. It took me too long to realize that I would have sacrificed everything — my old friends, my family — for this. But I should have."

"Your family. Your mother, right?"

"Mother and older sister. But she lives on the east coast, and she's got a family of her own. So some years for Christmas it's just me and my mom," he says. "I think I feel worst about what happened to her, especially after what she's already been through. She had to bury me. Can you even imagine — "

He stops himself. _Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course she can imagine. She's lived it. She can imagine that and then some._

She pulls away slightly, no reaction at first, as she slips her hands from his back. He does the same, and then she surprises him, taking both of his hands in hers. No reaction at all. _She let it slide. But you're both thinking the same thing._ "Yeah," she says softly. "I think I can."

She runs her thumb over his knuckles. "Did you ever think about how we got here? About all the things that had to happen in order for us to be right here, right now?"

Jack Bristow recruits his daughter into the CIA before SD-6 gets to her. Daniel Hecht stops one drink earlier and doesn't leave a message on her answering machine. She never tells him in the first place.

A mission fails and she's killed, in Rome, or Paris. New Delhi. London. Dublin. Berlin. Moscow. Amsterdam. Los Angeles, because you don't get to the airport in time, or Security Section gets there faster.

The CIA decides you should stay in Paris. They bring you back, but assign you a different agent. SD-6 never finds you out, never puts a hit out on you. Jack Bristow never intervenes, never has you deposited in the same city as his daughter.

Her mother gets another assignment, never kills your father, never links you together, way back when.

"Yes. I've thought about it."

"And?"

"I've pretty much resigned myself to never having it all," he says. "But I think maybe I ended up exactly where I'm supposed to be."

She leans in, brushes his lips with hers. "Me too," she says, so soft he can barely hear it.

He slips his arms back around her, pulls her into his lap, and holds her there, cheek pressed against his. Her breathing goes shallow, and for a little while, he thinks she is asleep, which is fine with him, because it means she is relaxed, no longer upset. 

But she sighs and shifts, eventually. "I guess I should go and reheat dinner," and she stands, starts to walk away. Halfway across the living room, she turns around and pauses.

"Vaughn, I love you."

Good God. She just — she did. Exactly where you're supposed to be. A little late, but here.

"I love you too, Sydney."

———

On a cold January night, he sits on the couch in his — their — living room and watches a Blackhawks game. She is there, sprawled across the couch, head in his lap, reading something for class. She'll recommend it to him, after she's done, if she thinks it's any good.

She waits for a commercial to look up at him. "You know what we have in common, Michael?"

"What?"

"We both like to do this."


	12. Normal

Chapter 11 — Normal

The call comes in February, on his cell phone, on his way to work.

"Hey, Mike — need to ask a favor." Peter. "I need to borrow some money. I lost a thousand bucks on Saturday's game."

Thousand? Not a thousand. No. No. No. Not now, with her here and things going perfectly. Not now.

"Sure," he chokes out. "I'll, uh, we can deal with it at work. Take care." He puts extra emphasis on the last two words. The odds are good, he thinks, that they'll be the last he ever says to Peter. _You won't ever know what happened to him. You won't ever know why you had to abandon this life._

"You too, Mike."

Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred fucking dollars. He turns into the next driveway, slams his hand down on the dashboard. Tells himself to focus, car in reverse, Sydney's number on speed dial.

He'd like the chance to stop at their apartment, pick up a few supplies, not sure what he'll need in the next few days. But the warning, he knows, means _ leave now_, and even the one stop he has to make is a risk.

No answer on her phone_. Class Tuesday mornings, this semester. She turned her phone off. Damn it, Syd. Damn it._

His emergency contact, next, the digits rolling out of his mind, although he's never dialed them. A man answers on the first ring. "Dave's Auto Repair. How can I help you?"

"I was wondering if my car was ready."

"What car is that, sir?"

"It's a 1998 Jeep Cherokee."

Silence, for a few seconds. "Mr. Henderson, we are aware of your situation. You are to head east on I-74 immediately. Five miles over the speed limit. No more, no less. Pull into the second rest stop. We'll be there."

"I have to make a stop first."

"No. No stops. You get on Interstate 74, and you — "

" — I'm making a stop first." _I have to. This is not open for negotiation._ "And then I might need relocation for a second person."

He thinks he hears the man sigh over the phone. "Male or female?"

"Female."

"Is this Ms. Murray?"

"Yes."

"We'll be ready for that contingency. And I would encourage you to do whatever it is intend to do as fast as you can. Do you have a firearm?"

"Yes." At Peter's insistence, locked in his glove box. He'll unlock it when he stops for her.

"Good. Don't contact this number again unless it's an absolute emergency." _ Unless you need the gun in your glove box._

The man hangs up. He passes a sign — speed limit 35 — and brakes until his speedometer lays right on 40. He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out his wallet. There's a copy of her schedule inside, folded into one of the credit card slots, and he slides it out. Finds the building, Stevenson Hall, and room number, 107, glad he took that day off and let her show him around campus a few weeks ago.

Five minutes away from Illinois State now, he estimates, eyes darting to each mirror, and no tails so far. Past the sign that says "Welcome To Normal." He laughs, bitter.

The first sign of the campus — dormitory buildings looming in the distance — is a relief, quickly replaced by more tension, for the question he'll have to ask. For her safety, possibly endangered by his presence here. Possibly endangered anyway, if everyone in Bloomington was compromised. He should have, he realizes, thought to ask his emergency contact about that. _But then, he knew you were going for her. He would have told you. No, the danger is only to you. And her, now, if they're tracking you somehow._

He pulls into the parking deck, takes his ticket and squeals crooked into a space. Unlocks the glove box and pulls out the H&K inside. Never fired, as far as he knows. He tucks it beneath his belt at his back — not visible and not very accessible beneath the thick winter coat, but it will have to do.

A quick glance around the garage before he slams the car door, and then he runs down the ramp. Sprints across a small field — half grass, half melting snow — and bursts through the door of the brick-and-concrete building. He forces himself to walk once inside — shouldn't have run outside, either. Too conspicuous, he tells himself, _but then it's all gone to hell anyway._

101, 103, 105 and finally 107. A full classroom, 20 to 25 students, most of them scribbling in notebooks, binders and the margins of the paperback on all of their desks. Sydney among them, in the middle of the room, focused on the book in front of her, and it takes her a moment to notice him, standing there in the doorway.

She stands, takes her purse but not her books, and works her way through the narrow aisle, most of the class and eventually her professor staring at her exit. 

"What's going on?" she whispers, worried, when she reaches him.

He takes her arm, pulls her further down the hallway, where the class can't watch and listen. He needs to say this quickly, but it still takes him a moment to begin.

"Peter and I had an arrangement. We were supposed to call each other if we thought our locations were compromised, to warn each other if we needed to get out of town." He pauses. "He called me this morning, Syd, and I have to go, and I'm not sure if or when I'll be able to come back."

"No," she says softly, shaking her head, eyes already moist. "No. This can't be happening."

Not now, damn it. I know, Sydney. I know.

He doesn't have any right to ask her this, he thinks, to leave her friends, her life here, all her progress toward another almost-degree. Not after what he did to her. But he has to.

If she says no, he'll tell her he loves her, because she needs to hear it, one more time. Kiss her, maybe. Difficult to predict what he'll do when desperate. Maybe he'll beg, plead, tell her he needs her. Maybe he'll think about it, decide it would be hypocritical, and he'll turn around and walk away and hope against hope she'll come running after him, grab his arm and spin him around. If he makes it to the door alone, maybe he'll wonder what's the point of going on, think why bother without her. But he will go on, and hope it ends up being safe for him to return here. Hope that her decision doesn't change things irreparably between them, like his nearly did. It is more likely, he thinks, that he will never see her again, that this will truly be life without Sydney, and no chance of a woman at the next bar who _just might really_ be her.

If she says yes, he'll realize he's just proposed and they'll be married by the end of the day, the certificate in their new package. He won't celebrate, not yet, just take her hand and they'll run like hell. He'll go 70 until they hit the rest stop and entrust themselves to Mr. Dave's Auto Repair. Somehow, Mr. Dave will get them on a plane. And then they'll go to a new apartment in a new Bloomington and lay in the new bed with his arm around her and his hand on her stomach, thinking that there can never be a child there. Too dangerous, because this has made it clear they can't ever lull themselves into normal, and the past may always take precedence over the present and the future. They'll live prepared to run at any moment. No real possessions, no clutter, just each other, and it will have to be enough.

How much will you sacrifice, Sydney? Is supposed to be a place or a person?

"Syd, I have to go. Now." He won't be able to say this without his voice breaking. He decides he doesn't care.

"Will you — "

"Yes."

[End]


End file.
